Corked

When it's really boring at work, the busboy and I invent drinking games. We never actually drink to them. We just make them up, play them, master them, teach them to others, and imagine how fun they'd be if we were actually drinking, or in my case, marketing them.

We might have served 30 dinners tonight, unbearably slow. I'm flipping through USA Today at the bar, since it's so slow that management hasn't even bothered to show up.

The busser suggests we invent a new game tonight. Our favorite one is a real original, a variation on Barrel of Monkeys, involving, cocktail swords. It's a blast, but we've mastered it and we're ready to move on, so a few minutes later, he decides the goal of the evening is a new game, which must involve corks. I decide we need a word game, and he collects 14 corks. We take turns with the Sharpie, forming letters on the end of each cork. We throw them like dice, forming as many words as possible in 15 seconds. It's pretty fun. We keep modifying the game, using a champagne cork as a spinner to determine turn, and what-not.

My partner-in-games is excited about how he can turn this game into the best drinking game ever at his next college party, and I explain to him that it's not really a drinking game, but it's called Scrabble.

We always go through this; we invent a game, he says it would make a great drinking game, I explain that all the games in the world have already been invented. Still, we pretend to make up games.

I've spent a few too many dull nights in a row, next to an empty tip jar, lately. Making words with corks is an amusing way to entertain yourself when the busy holiday season seems stuck in traffic.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

- Pink Floyd, "Time"