Your Name is What???
April is a month of birthdays in our family. You might recall we celebrated my mother in law's 70th birthday a few weeks ago at the country club down the street from our house. Now lest you think we live in some kind of middle class splendor here, let me assure you that it's a plain jane neighborhood club. Abby and the blonde goddess will not be attending any debutante balls there. But the restaurant is really nice and it was Josh's choice for his birthday dinner.
At my mother in law's party, I drank rather freely of the cosmpolitans provided at the open bar. I was, dare I say, a bit smashed by the end of the evening. I became especially close to the staff at the club who were so obligingly refilling my glass every 20 minutes.
So when we went in last night to celebrate Josh's birthday (14!) it was old home week for me. I jovially greeted Chad the bartender and asked for a Cosmopolitan.
"Right away Ms. Brunner," he said cheerfully.
Our waitress came and we chatted gaily as she took our dinner orders and brought us bread. Bread which I consumed freely, slathered with butter. Take that Dr. Atkins!!
Anyway, throughout the night, I called her by name several times just to show everyone at the table how friendly we were. "Kristy, can we get some more butter?" I asked and she responded pleasantly and brought some. "Kristy, can Josh get a special dessert for his birthday?" I asked and she brought it out right away. She posed for pictures with Josh and was having a really good time with us.
I commented on that as she started clearing our table. "You're our favorite waitress," I told her. "You're so much fun!"
"Well, it's easy when I have a family that likes to cut up," she said. She was holding a stack of plates as she said this, standing behind me, and a fork slithered out of her grasp and fell down my back.
We both started laughing and I said "Oh yeah, what a great relationship, with you throwing forks at me. I'm gonna tell Spence to fire that Kristy for throwing forks!"
She laughed and said "My name is Bretta."
"Yeah right," I said, laughing along with her.
"Seriously, my name is Bretta," she said.
I stopped laughing and looked at her. "No it's not," I told her. "You told me it was Kristy at Tim's mom's party."
"No," she said. "There is a Kristy that works here, but it's not me."
"You told me it was Kristy," I insisted.
She launched into a lengthy explanation about how much she and Kristy resembled each other and how she had been at mother in law's party, but not as a staff member. She had been at the bar talking to Chad. Also, she had just gotten her roots done, so that made her look a lot more like Kristy so she could see how I got confused.
I just sat there, shaking my head in disbelief. "But you're....Kristy," I said weakly, holding on to some last kernel of hope that I had not been calling her by the wrong name all night.
"No," she said gently, "I'm Bretta."
I felt like a character in a Lifetime movie. Everyone around the table was staring at me, shaking their heads. The noise in the room swelled and I felt isolated, alone in my confusion. Had I been living a lie? Was I on some sort of carbohydrate induced hallucinogenic trip?
And then I remembered. Remembered with perfect clarity everything that had happened that fateful night at the club. Remembered Kristy, the real Kristy, as an attractive, older, blonde lady with glasses whom I had not seen in awhile. Had asked where she'd been and she told me she had been at the other club owned by the management. Remembered that she looked absolutely NOTHING like the woman currently waiting on us.
"Um, oh yeah, now I remember Kristy," I stammered as everyone at the table roared with laughter. I seized my martini glass and brandished it, saying "It was the booze, ok. It was the booze that confused me!!!"
She laughed and we chatted, but I was ready to crawl under the table and hide. Not only had I gotten her name wrong, I then ARGUED with her about what her name really was. It's hard to imagine being more asinine than that.
We finished our meal and I slunk out, muttering "good bye Bretta" as I went. The only consolation is I will never confuse the two of them again. Especially since I am going to insist the management provide name tags for its employees!
