Scenes From A Crowded Bar.

I’m no anthropologist. But I do really like saying the word “anthropomorphism.” (Go ahead and try it. It’s fun. An-throw-po-mooooor-phism. See?) I think that’s enough to qualify myself as an Anthro-Bar-ologist.

That essentially means that when I go out to drink, while I'm sitting alone at the bar, sobbing quietly into a cocktail napkin, I notice little situations, occurrences and characters that most people are familiar with. They just don’t realize it yet. Let’s take a look at a few.

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The Awkward Hand Lead – A few nights ago, I witnessed this one and remembered how weird it makes me feel. A girl and guy (who probably just started dating semi-seriously) arrive at a bar. The girl spots her friends across the room, grabs the guy’s hand and proceeds to lead him through the crowd like a mom taking her hairy, overgrown son to the playground.

It makes me so uncomfortable to see this guy walk in the door with his testicles attached, only to have them symbolically removed within seconds, all while on public display.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I think the guy should lead. Chances are, he’s bigger and can cut his way through the crowd faster, leaving a convenient wake of space for his girlfriend to walk in.

I’m not saying he should club her like UgDug the caveman and drag her to their destination. Sometimes it’s just nice to feel like a man, even if your girlfriend does paint your toenails when she’s bored.

Not that I’ve ever had my toenails painted or anything. Maybe a little work around the cuticles, but that’s just because I have very sensitive nail beds.

Um…moving on.

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The Slobstacle Course – The hand lead is the perfect segue to this topic. You show up at a bar. Again, your friends are all the way in the back corner (Dammit. Why can’t my friends pick a booth by the front door? Can’t they see that I’m slightly inconvenienced by their seat choice?).

Once you realize you’re going to have to hire a Sherpa and pack an overnight bag just to make the trek from here to there, you have to set up a game plan. How can you meander through the pack of drunks, smokers, bathroom lines and homeless guys who came inside to get out of the rain? This, my friends is your Slobstacle Course.

Lit cigarettes will come flying towards your face. High heels will grind into your feet. Drinks will be spilled on your pants, making it look like you wet yourself. And most annoyingly, complete assholes will be oblivious to the fact that you’re trying to slide by them as they tell their buddies how wasted they are and try to one-up each other with their tales of sexual conquest.

After all these drunken booby traps (Booty traps? - That’s what I said…booby traps!), I sometimes half-expect a giant boulder to start rolling after me like I’m Indiana Jones.

But it’s all worth it to finally make it to your group and enjoy a beer or two. Until you have to take a piss and realize the bathroom is on the other side of the room, meaning you have to do the whole Slobstacle Course all over again. Except this time it’s backwards. Try doing it with a blindfold on while hopping on one leg and shouting random, inappropriate racial slurs, too. That always makes it a little more interesting.

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The Pointless Fan – You’re sitting on a bar’s outside deck. It’s a ridiculously hot day. You want nothing more than a cool breeze to sweep across your face and cool the salty beads of sweat that have collected on your forehead. But then you look up. There’s a fan. You’re saved!

But it’s moving slower than any fan that has ever been created in the history of fanmanship.

You wonder, “Is it even on?” You notice all the other fans are creaking along just as slowly. There’s not a breeze blowing them, so they must be on. And they must also have the equivalent of one AAA battery in their motors.

Why are these fans here? They’re not cooling you. They’re mocking you.

Mocking you with their inability to produce anything more than what could only be mistaken for a mouse fart. Actually, at this point, you’d welcome the breeze produced by a mouse fart, because it would cool you off more than these horrible contraptions that are trying to pass themselves off as wind creators.

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So next time you’re out at a bar, being led around by your girlfriend like a neutered puppy, trying to avoid a Marlboro Red in your cornea and wishing a giant fan would blow all the drunken assholes out the front door…take a look around. You never know what you might notice.