The Medium is the Message

It was like old home week this weekend. A very special birthday of a very special girl brought a lovely couple (birthday girl in tow) from the South and a charming girl from the East. Like always, it was delightful to see these wonderful people.

I have to say that even after about 20 years of friendship, Reem - the charmer from the East - teaches me things every time I see her. This weekend's lesson: beautiful people can say anything with far fewer consequences.*

At a loud bar in the Pearl we danced, played and joked. We made friends and I shocked these new friends with the mere fact that I am fun (aka kinda shameless) whilst being completely sober. Needing a slight break from the revelry and noise, I stepped outside to find Bex and get some fresh air. After a few moments we were joined outside by Reem and a man who immediately drew to mind George Eliot's villainous** "frog-faced Joshua Rigg." I will never fully understand why Reem was spending any time with this guy in the first place.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

This angry, spiteful fellow was introduced to me as an ex-Mormon, and I to him as an active-Mormon. (Immediately he hated me, maybe for this fact alone.) His job is helping homeless teenagers in some capacity, and when Reem told him that she helped out with the finances for a charity with a similar aim, he announced that he doesn't deal with that bs*** and that working on the front lines is really where it is at. I reminded him that it is because people like Reem dealing with that bs that keep these institutions financially viable he can have a job. AND, I said, the more money organizations can spend on marketing and publicity, the more people can be involved and truly effect change.

Reem then told this guy that he was prideful. He protested, and demanded evidence to justify such an accusation. After a few seconds of trying to pinpoint exactly what it was about Captain Prideful, Reem said, "Molly help me out here." I added that it was his demeanor that made him seem prideful. He objected to this. He wanted proof. He got super angry, and turned to me, completely forgetting it was Reem who called him on his mass amounts of pride in the first place, and said, "Suppose I was to call you a 'bitch.' I would need some proof to back it up." At this point he put a cigarette the wrong way in to his mouth. I said, "My behavior is your evidence, just like yours is to us. And you're about to light the wrong end of that cigarette." At which point Reem and I took our leave, found our friends and left for a different bar.

Since then I have been pondering why Captain Drunk and Prideful was yelling at me and not Reem. I wasn't being any more sassy than Reem was. I wasn't the one who initially called him out. But I'm also not the one who is gorgeous. I'm not the one he chatted up and bought a drink for. I'm the cock-block sober friend who remembers all of the details of the evening, including the fact that he was frog-faced and a ginormous douche b, who didn't have even the slightest chance with Reem--but I bet he'll remember it differently, when he writes his weekend recap blogpost.

* Using the scientific method, we took this hypothesis, used a control group (me) to compensate for variables and unequivocally proved this theory to be true.

**Can he really be called 'villainous' just because he dashed the expectations of charming ne'er-do-well Fred Vincy? I say yes- mostly because when boring people beat out charming people it is a bummer.

***One guess as to whether he used the expletive or the euphemism.