Mind your manners.

On a Friday night, Echo and I get to Eli's Bar & Grille early (as usual) and hang around waiting for it to pick up. Echo is drinking beer and I'm fairly sure there were a couple jagerbombs in there too. I'm the sober driver, so I'm drinking a Diet Coke and trying to convince Echo to go ask this cute guy to dance with her. She and I both know that when I'm not drunk, I'm not gonna dance. So basically she's on her own unless she finds a dude (which not hard to do for Echo at Eli's!).

So, I see this really cute guy "wearing a nice shirt", standing by himself just off of the dance floor. That's my thing... I seek out the guys wearing nice shirts and then nag at Echo to go talk to them. To me, a nice shirt says they probably have a job. In reality, all it means is that they spent $4 on a clearance-bin dress shirt at Wal-Mart in order to pick up chicks that are a gullible as I am.

A couple jager-bombs later, Echo is brave enough to approach him and ask him to dance. Mr.Manners-Wearing-Nice-Shirt very politely declines and says he is waiting for someone. Annoyed, she comes back to her chair next to me at the bar and says, "God!" I'm annoyed too and I want a candy bar, so I suggest we drive over to the gas station around the corner. Echo goes in and heads to the back to go to the restroom, wherein she literally runs into this cute guy that I named Lawnmower Boy. After we head back to Eli's, we notice that cute Lawnmower Boy has come in too. Small world! Or should I say, small parking lot.

About 5 minutes after we sit down, the Mr.Manners-Wearing-Nice-Shirt that Echo approached earlier comes up to us and politely asks if he can sit with us. He politely says that he isn't from around here and would like to just hang out with us because we seem really nice. He politely sits down. (Notice I'm describing him as "polite" quite a bit. That's because he's freakin way too polite. Like, disturbingly polite.)

Extremely polite introductions are made. His name is Marshall, who we would later dub "Marshall Manners". (God I'm clever.) He says that he's waiting for his girlfriend to show up. He just finished taking her and her friends out to dinner (he paid for everyone) and she asked him to meet her here.

Marshall Manners tells us that he works on an oil rig down in Texas Louisiana or something like that. His company pays for his commute back to Omaha once or twice a month. And all his meals, entertainment, cab rides (his car stays in Texas Louisiana), and all other expenses while he's here. If this isn't unbelievable enough, the guy has travelled all over the world with this job and his accent is just plain hilarious.

He sounds like Keanu Reeves as the surfer-dude/moron from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, mixed with Hugh Grant's ultra-polite British accent, and then finally mixed in with Matthew McConaughey's Stoner/Southern accent. So, a Duuuuuuude-British-Southern accent.


It turns out later that evening that his girlfriend has ditched him for "an old friend"... to go see a movie about boxing. Yes, the 'old friend' is a guy, yes that was her oh-so-believable story, and YES, he actually believed it. And she doesn't even call to tell him she's ditching him. He has to call her a couple times wondering where the hell she is (super politely) until she picks up, and I can hear him being a complete doormat while he's on the phone with her. What kind of girl is this?! And more importantly, what kind of moron is he?

Echo still wants to dance and she's pretty tipsy at this point. And damn Marshall Manners is just plain boring yakkety yakking away, so I don't blame her when she goes off to dance with Lawnmower Boy that she has previously ran into at the gas station. Meanwhile, I sit and talk with Marshall, who really seems to be The Nicest Guy on Earth and also The Biggest Pushover. Echo and the cute guy come back after a little while and I hear that the guy does miscellaneous landscaping work. Uhm, okay. I always wonder if that's true or just a cover-up for "mows lawns".

So, before Echo leaves again to continue dancing with Lawnmower Boy, she hears from Marshall Manners that he's planning on taking a cab home (remember, he takes cabs everywhere because his car is in Texas Louisiana). Now, let me give you a little background on this: One of us is always the drunk, the other always drives. The drunk one always volunteers us to give rides home to whatever strangers we happen meet throughout the night.

I do it all the time: "Echo Echo Echo (poking her) , we have to take [complete stranger we just met] home. They shouldn't drive. Really, Echo. We have to take them home, okay? Echo, okay?" So, Echo tells him we will take him home. In fact, she is forced to insist because of course Mr. Manners doesn't want to accept at first. He finally does, and I give Echo a look like, "UHMMMM, what did you just do?!" which she doesn't notice because she's leaving to dance.

Well, going to Eli's as often as we do, you start to notice that literally everyone there gets plastered as the night goes on. A group of girls were drunkenly buying a round of shots near Marshall and me, and accidentally ordered an extra. This is not unusual for drunk people to miscount their own group of friends. They shoved it in my face at first, but when I refused they gave it to Mr. Manners.

Marshall Manners: What is it?
Extremely drunk girl: I dunno, alcohol?
Marshall Manners: Golly gee. (or something similar, in a Duuuude-British-Southern accent)

After he took the shot I could tell he was getting quite drunk. This actually made him talk more. Blah blah blah. I sip my Diet Coke and mentally record his accent because it is frickin strange. Meanwhile, Echo is off dancing with Lawnmower Boy.

Last call comes around and the three of us leave. Marshall Manners politely gets into the backseat of my car, while Echo sits up front next to me. As we drive, we're asking Marshall bluntly why the hell he's still with his inconsiderate girlfriend. I'm blunt because, well, I usually am, but Echo is the bad kind of blunt... DRUNK BLUNT. Somehow the conversation leads there, and Marshall confides quite seriously that his girlfriend had a form of cancer a while back and cannot have children. I'm not even sure how this got brought up, but he told us.

For reasons unknown to me, this makes Echo laugh. Yes, Echo laughed at cancer. That's when I realize that I may in fact be going to hell just by association. Mind you, she's a little drunk, but I scold her with an "Echo!" though this doesn't seem to stop her. I think she thought he was kidding or something, I have no idea.

But this obviously doesn't phase Mr. Marshall Manners, who is still a little drunk, and when we stop at his house to drop him off, he leans in from the backseat and gazes at Echo and says "You have such beautiful eyes" and touches her cheek.

Okay... So let's break down the logic here: You're not gonna hit on the girl that patiently listened to you yammer on all night long and drove your drunk ass home. You're hitting on the girl that laughs at cancer. OKAY THEN.

Thus concludes yet another completely insane night at Eli's! Hope to see you all there next time. Believe me... it will be interesting.