Heaven has a road, but no one travels it; Hell has no gate but men will dig to get there.

The following may in fact be my actual ticket to hell; rather than marrying again. It is a bright and shining example of the dark and shitty place my sense of humor will take me, given enough alcohol.

It is a fact of the restaurant business that the first one's for dinner are your older patrons. They are there to avoid the crowds and take advantage of any early bird specials one may be offering.
It is also a fact that in the eighties the restaurant business was a hotbed of substance abuse (not much has changed) and the break between lunch and dinner-the launching pad of bad behaviour for later in the evening.

There was a bar and grill across the parking lot of the restaurant and a few of us were pounding down cocktails to steel us for the slow and crushing onslaught of the geriatrics at five o'clock.

I may have been overdoing it.

As I began to go into a black-out before four p.m. there seems to be no question of it. I was always cursed or blessed, depending on how one looks at it, with being able to maintain and function even in the darkest, most incomprehensible of binges.

It was if my sense of humor rose to the surface of my consciousness and took over, steering me past the rocky shoals of complete annihilation, bringing me to berth at a safe and sound location.

Except this time.

My first table was a man and his wife; both probably in their eighties-man in a walker; woman, outfitted with what I can only refer to as the voice box prosthesis given to trachea cancer victims, or what I lovingly refer to as "the cancer kazoo."

I was dimly aware of standing in front of them, weaving a bit, with the full intention of explaining the evenings specials when suddenly I was possessed with the spirit of Bill Murray's lounge singer, grabbing the said 'kazoo' and going into 'the bit.'

"Hey, what a great crowd, anybody here from out of town?" The man became apoplectic and I found out the dear old lady was attached to the apparatus so as I weaved about the table, she lurched and jerked along with me. That was when I broke into the song "Feelings."

You haven't lived until you have heard that schmaltzy song run through someone else's voice box.

The entire waitstaff was absolutely silent and stood open mouthed, watching the debacle.

I have never been fired so fast.