Normalish

Alright so the heading of this post is a little deceiving. My boss is in fact as far from crazy as they come. He is the kind of guy who eats the exact same salad everyday for lunch. Nothing in his life is out of place or lacking in planning. When he wears a sports jersey, he tucks it in his jeans. Which, by the way, have tapered legs and are tight around his ankles. Anyway, I digress. Alright, actually one more item, his hair is like a plastic cast he puts on his head. There is not a single hair out of place and never a difference from day to day. He gets his haircut so frequently you cannot tell when it has been cut. Well this post is about how out of touch he is. He is not a bad guy by any stretch of the imagination, but he does not fully get it. Sorry once again about the tangent.

Alright… So he invites me to a football game a month in advance, because he wants us to bond a bit outside of work. Good team-building and all of that. Of course, I am excited to go. One day we are on the topic of headaches and I talk about how I never drink water on the weekends and what a moron I am because that is when I need water the most. He responses by asking, “Why? Do you replace your water consumption with alcohol?” Now before I answer that, I by no means claim myself to be a rock star drinker. I do indulge in an adult beverage here and there, but I do not drink like a wild man. That said, I drink enough were water on the weekends would not be such a bad idea.

Back to the story. I tell my boss that seems to be the problem and he says, “I better see that Sunday.” Pause for a moment. I have explained my boss to you as an absolute square and this is the comment he makes. So I assume the game is really an unwinding session where we throw a couple back and let it all hang out. That whole conversation happens on a Monday. So I am thinking, wow the game could be a wild time. I pre-warn my wife, “Hey I am going to the game with my boss and he is fired up so pretend like I am not going to be around all Sunday, because I will be picked up early and be getting home late.” Seemed like a reasonable thing to say based on my boss’ comment of “better see that Sunday.”

Advance a couple days and we are now 2 days from the comment and 3 days until the game. I decide to ask my boss when he plans to pick me up for the game, because if we are replacing alcohol with water, we must be tailgating early. He tells me he is picking me up at 11:00. Now that would not be so bad if the game started at 4:00, but the game is at 1:00. So now I am a bit confused, I live an hour from the game, the game starts at 1:00, he is picking me up at 11:00, and there is no chance of him seeing me “throw a couple back” at the game or replacing my water consumption with beer.

So fast forward to Sunday. I awake early and decide I will pack a couple beers for the road. After all, he is driving and I want to at least offer something as a show of thanks for taking me to the game. He picks me up, we head to the game and park at about Noon. I figure that a couple beers are in order, because he had talked so highly about seeing me throw a couple back earlier in the week. I offer him a beer and with a bit of a shagrin on his face he takes the brew. We drink one and I decide to offer him another. He declines and I decide I don’t want to drink by myself, so we head to the game. For a moment I think maybe he is an at the game drinker. However, who ever wants to pay $8 a beer. So we head to the game and I think to myself, “I will buy him a beer at the game to say thanks for taking me.” We get in the game and I offer to buy him a beer. He declines, instead, opting for chicken fingers. I buy the chicken fingers and we head to our seats. We enjoy the entire game without a frothy beverage in hand and then head to the car and he drives me home.

I know this was a long post to get to that end, but my question is, when my boss expected to see me replace my water consumption with alcohol, did he think I meant 12oz of alcohol was the issue? Long story to get to this, but I wish knew what my boss meant when he said, “I better see that Sunday.”