Coyote Ugly

There are moments in one's life when one thinks How did I get here? This is a story about one of those moments.

Yesterday was Greg's birthday, so the group went out for a grand taverna dinner downtown. We picked a place with live music, and Eleni could not have been more excited. She immediately started up some banter with the mandolin player whose name, it seems, was Alecko. She informed him that it was Greg's birthday in order to ensure sufficient public humiliation, but oh, if only that was the end of the mortifying events of the night. If only...

Turns out, Alecko was intrigued by our group and wanted to know all of our names so that he could personalize all of his songs for the evening as respectively dedicated tunes. He had a really hard time with "Meredith." Anyway, so we are in the middle of dinner when Alecko decides that we simply were not being festive enough, and he walks over to our table and, as luck would have it, grabs the hand of yours truly and drags me onto the "stage" demanding that I dance. Terrified, I force Eleni to join me. The expected dance was a variation of Greek line dancing, but having no real idea what I was doing, my "dance" wound up looking more like a newborn baby giraffe trying to take its first steps. Certain now that we had surely reached the humiliation quota, we thanked Alecko for the snappy tune and took our seats back at the table to continue our dinner. If only...

We ate in peace and happiness for a time, but Alecko was not satisfied. Just around the time we had finished our meal, he decided that the party must continue. I know enough Greek to recognize the lyrics "on the table" in one of his songs, and I know enough about Greek joie de vivre to know that this must be more than just a lyric. Eleni was thrilled at this song's introduction and starts yelling to Alecko: "Amanda! Amanda! She is small!" And with that, Alecko put down his mandolin, marches over to our table, literally pushes our plates and cups out of the way, pulls over a chair for me, and forcibly hoists me onto the table where moments ago I was innocently enjoying some feta cheese.

Having just consumed about 800 pounds of tzatziki, I was fairly certain that the table was going to break beneath me, so I was considerably afraid to move, which resulted in my "Greek table dance" being me standing in one spot and sort of erratically waving my arms around. There may have been some rhythmic clapping, as well. If you haven't guessed yet, this was the How did I get here? moment of the story.

Finally pleased, Alecko let me get off the table and let us pay our bill and get the hell out of Dodge. If that ever happens again, I am definitely throwing plates and napkins. Opa!