A Personal Best – Three at Once!

As it is nearly every other night of the year, the weather was perfect last night in San Diego. With our friends Sol and Chelle, we had a table on the patio at Pomodoro, one of our favorite Italian restaurants. As usual, I ordered pasta carbonara, one of my favorite Italian dishes and one that has the amazing ability to bypass the digestive tract and go directly to the waistline. Our friends had been in Japan for the past couple of weeks. They were anxious to catch up on the news and politics of the United States and we were anxious to hear about their trip to the land of the midnight sun. Before we ordered dinner, we opened a bottle of red and a bottle of white. Our table was adorned with eight wine glasses and four water glasses.

For those of you that have heard me speak of Sol in the past, you know he is engaging, intelligent, dynamic, charismatic and a provocative thinker and conversationalist. With that description and the fact that he is a dear friend, it may come as an inexplicable surprise to find out he’s a Republican. It’s as if he is an intricate 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle where one of the pieces has been replaced with another from a different puzzle and then beat, bent and bruised to fit. It is some comfort to know that in the run-up to the last Presidential election, he never could keep a straight face when he’d say he thought Sarah Palin was a good choice.

Nonetheless, the four of us delighted in sampling the nice wines that were nestled in amongst the twelve glasses reflecting the fading light of the sunset. We were captivated by the stories of their recent trip to Japan. As the restaurant filled to capacity, our dinners were served, all four better than the other three.

As our plates approached empty, the conversation followed its meandering, but inevitable path into the sea of politics. It soon became apparent Sol had found no one to joust with in Japan and longed for combat. Chelle told us they had actually attended a Sumo wrestling match in Japan. It turned out to be a great segue into our political discussion as Sol bowed and went on the offensive.

“So what do you think of your Obama now?” After that bit of probing, Sol issued forth with his opening barrage. “What happened to all the change Obama promised in his campaign? He’s just a continuation of Bush. Politics as usual.”

I knew our sport had always involved the tactic of firing up the passions of the opponent. I wasn’t going to fall for that old trick. I coolly acknowledged to Sol that Obama was indeed a politician, the proof being that he maneuvered his way through the election process and into the White House. We sparred a bit and the conversation gradually became more animated. I pointed out that Obama was trying to tackle health care unlike anyone in our nation’s history. I reminded him that Obama’s march toward fiscal responsibility was painful, but game changing. I shed light on the fact that Obama’s new approach to foreign policy amounted to monumental change.

He saw he was getting the upper hand on me and moved in for the kill. “Obama’s a socialist, a pawn of the unions, another business-as-usual politician,” he cried out. At that the four people sitting at the next table turned toward Sol and gave him a clear sign of their approval of his stance, wrong as it clearly was. I sneered at the intruders as they exchanged smiles with Sol.

In that it is an act of great immorality to allow such monumental falsehoods to stand unchallenged, I launched into a vigorous defense of my position. I countered each of Sol’s fallacious points, but now he relished the fact he had reinforcements at the next table and continued lobbing rhetorical stones from the high ground. He had me pinned down. (He’d probably brought in the people at the next table as shills and offered to buy their wine in exchange for the ambush.)  I was up against an 800 pound Sumo wrestler and had to be creative to get out of the bind in which I found myself.

It was an Italian restaurant; why not talk like an Italian? Alright, I didn’t really plan it that way. It just worked out that way. My response to Sol’s assault on my solid logic became increasingly animated. They say Italians tend to talk with their hands. And so did I.

With a dexterous sweep of my hand, I made my next point with a flare. Oops! I also made it with a crash. My hand caught one of the twelve glasses sitting on the table and sent it flying into another. With lightening fast reflexes, this old third-baseman would save the day. I instantly reached into the conflagration to catch the glass before disaster struck. As I did so, I hit a third glass. The first glass had now shattered the second glass. In midflight, I instinctively caught fragments of the second glass as it disintegrated. As the blood began to flow from my wound, the third glass careened into a fourth glass. Glass number three shattered into its hundred pieces and joined those of the first two glasses still in various trajectories above and about the table. Glass four contained red wine or it did until in landed on Chelle. A fifth glass had recently been filled with water and ice which Lisa now wore. I’m sure it helped keep the stains from the wine in glass six which also landed on her to a minimum.

When the remnants of my “big bang” settled to the table and the floor, every couple of seconds another piece of shattered glass would tinkle from the table to the floor below. At that point, I looked up. Every eye in the entire restaurant was not surprisingly on our table.

Dale Carnegie once said that if you’re going to lay an egg, don’t just hang your head. Stand back and admire it. I smiled and tipped my hat to everyone in the restaurant. First one, then another until the entire restaurant was applauding. I even thought about an encore, but we didn’t have enough glasses left on the table. 

And so ended another great evening with good friends. It’s incredible to what extremes those damn Republicans will go to in order to win an argument. I suspect he threw the glass into the mix to precipitate the explosion knowing that had he not, I would have won the argument. As it was, I never got to set him straight. Sol may have won the battle, but not the war. And damn I love that bastard.