That One in a Million
We've been at the GABS2017 (Great Australiasian Beer SpecTapular) for precisely 5 minutes and I've already lost my husband in a sea of partially bearded, hoody bedecked metrosexuals. The lights are bright and colourful, voices roll and crash against the stone floor, patrons glide through the room precariously balancing small plastic cups brimming with various golden hued beverages as they search for a place to alight and sip necter of the beer-class gods.
I made the mistake of pre-peeing. This is the prophylatic pee you take before you desparately need go piss two hours later after you have consumed roughly 5 litres of beer. You take it early in the day... ideally first thing to prepare the way, make space. You do it before the lines are long, the bathroom foul, and the toilet paper gone. It's a smart move, really. The rookie mistake was doing the pre-pee before finding a home base at one of the thousands of miles of bench tables. DrC has gone to get our first flight -- a paddle with 5 selected plastic-cupped specimens of potential greatness. He zigged, I zagged, and now he's gone.
This should be simple in 2017. Text the man. He'll text back. Done.
"where are you?"
"left of the entrance"
"I don't see you"
"Thro the entrance and left by toilet"
"I'm here, whre r u?"
"At a table"
No shit. A table. Really. It's a f*ing sea of tables.
"Which?"
"entrance, go left past toilets"
"you are not here" There is something singularly unsatisfying about texting this message. Wife voice. That's what's missing. I can't properly convey my complete frustration with his unhelpful responses in 144 chars or less.
"across from toilets, can't see you"
Another big surprise, you flaming shitburger.
After a long enough time passes that my complete disgust with his last missive must have finally sunk, my phone chirps "have beer"
Great. Good to know. That really helps distinguish you from the roughly 2000 other hairy men with beer sitting at a table near a toilet somewhere to the left of the entrance. I have an idea! How about we work backwards. "I'm in front of the 8 foot tall electric sign saying #GABS2017. The one by the entrance. The one that you can't miss. That sign to the left of the entrance and by a toilet." I figure there is a time for text-speak and a time when a nice long well crafted and punctuated message complete with capital letters is probably the only way you can make clear to your partner of 30 years that he is about to spend the next month without any sexual gratification.
"keep going left"
Okay. O.Kay. Left left left past two aisles of vendors, another bank of toilets, a bandstand, the craft college, and 2 meter tall game of jenga. And I can see him! Voices sing in harmony and the lighting changes to spotlight that one man of mine standing there with his silly alpaca hat, texting madly, bedecked in his fleece and his flannel, with his scrubby 21st century lazy beard and his wooden paddle of precariously perched beer samples. Like a pair of mated-for-life albatroses we twine necks and honk in greeting. It must be love.
