Drinks.

That night after soul food, I went drinking with my one friend from Michigan at the student bar. It was late and we were pretty hammered, and right when we were both finishing our second drinks, we both happened to glance down the bar, and since a big table had just gotten up to leave, the bar was piled high with glasses and pitchers and dirty paper plates from hamburgers and fries and stuff, and we both happened to notice at the same time a pitcher half full of beer.

Like right at that moment, though, a girl walks up to the bar, and my friend is like, "Excuse us, could you pass that down?", and when the girl did that, my friend was like, "You have to pardon us, we're from Michigan, we're uncouth."

"I'm from Michigan," the girl said.

"Really?", I was like, "Where?", and though we had already established that all of us were from Michigan, like everyone who lives near Detroit but not in Detroit proper, she was like, "Oh, near Detroit," though not saying the actual name of the damn town.

"Really?", I was like, "Like what?", and she said, "[name of the town my dad grew up in, just south of Detroit]."

After that, I told her about my dad, and she didn't know him, then I remembered that my godmother's friend ran for mayor, so I asked her if she knew her, and she was like, "Yes, I'm friends with her granddaughter," and at that moment it struck me that she maybe knew my godmother, so I was like, "Oh, so do you know Marge [Marge's last name]?", and the girl lit up was like, "Marge is crazy! I love her! I'm like best friends with her daughter," and it turned out that she went to high school with my godmother's daughter and was now teaching at a school near my neighborhood in the city.

We talked a bit more, and the girl kind of backtracked on her affectionate statement that Marge is crazy, just saying that she loved Marge, and eventually she excused herself to go rejoin her friends.

"My God, that is crazy," I said to my friend.

"I know," my friend was like. "I just hope she doesn't remember how she stole beer off the counter for us."

. . .

Like the next day, when I was telling a friend this story, she suggested that the half-pitcher of beer was everyone's leftover beer that the bartenders had dumped into one place, so that me and my friend had actually consumed everyone's backwash at a table of over 16 people. I immediately knew she was right, and I had to suppress a gag - that was too much, even for me.