I Stink Of Diner

I think I've gotta add the local Scotchwood Diner to my list of places from my pre-college days I can no longer frequent, which also includes the high school, the library, and the prom. But tonight, Anne and I revisited our old, old days — it's been four years of college plus two of high school since we met, which I was completely surprised to learn is a total of six years — by heading back to the diner. I came home, but I didn't feel like going home, so I called up Anne and asked if she wanted to go out, and the diner is pretty much the only non-Dunkin' Donuts place to go after midnight in Fanwood.

So to the diner we went.

Unfortunately, the diner was overrun by these asshole little high school students, and I mean they were like fucking roaches there. I swear, there were more high schoolers at the diner than there are in our actual high school. And they were all in this one big clot, which, sad to say, is how I remember high school for everybody except me and Anne (and Josh Hamerman, but no one gives a crap about him). We sat down, looked at the high school clot, looked at the menu, looked back at the high school clot, then I told Anne, "We need to find a bar."

To which Anne said, "We need to find a bar."

Something tells me I should've ordered rum in my hot chocolate. Really loudly, too: "Yeah, can I get a hot chocolate with whip cream and, uh, a SHOT of RUM. CAPTAIN MORGAN'S or BACARDI, if you've got it. Hey, YOU WANNA CHECK MY ID?"

It's weird, cause pretty much before I got inside the diner, the thought that I wouldn't fit in never even crossed my mind. Sure, there'd be some high schoolers. There'd be some of my peers, like I sometimes see at the Y. There'd be some fat middle-aged white trash smoking and talking about trucks or beer or something, like it was when my peers and, tangentially, I ruled the diner. Things've changed, though, more or less. That Seth kid who plays the guitar and acts like he's got ADD. and mysteriously appeared in Muse one day and started charming the crap out of everybody ('cept me, of course), he was there, too, buddy-buddy with all the high schoolers, especially the ones with the two-contrasting-colors hair or the metal shit in their faces. So that's it: either you hang out with high schoolers cause you just can't muster up the maturity to grow up, or you move on to a place where they won't let high schoolers past the bouncer. Unless the high schoolers have fake ID's, which they invariably do, because Anne, Aneesa, the Loewingers and I were the only high schoolers on the planet who actually followed the goddamn rules.