Tonight makes me think of the summer after my freshman year of college, when I was waitressing this awful little seafood chain restaurant off of Rt 28 in Manassas. I hated that job worse than any job I've ever had,  even worse than when the guy hired me to do tech writing for my first gig and then told me that he just wanted a woman to talk to and had hired me to listen to his problems. Anyway, the night I'm talking about, the aforementioned summer after my freshman year, I had to work the fourth of July because that's what all people working food service jobs have to do, but I didn't really get that because I was a teenager. I remember braiding ribbons into my braids, hoping that people would tip me better because I looked cute and patriotic, and god, I needed the money. I was paying for the college. No such luck.

Anyway, I remember this awful shift. It was storming and nobody came in. I made like 30 bucks in tips - 30 bucks, and that was for a whole evening of work, including my hourly 1.75. I might've spent more on gas getting there. The experience of doing that, of needing the money desperately but wanting so badly to be celebrating with my friends and family, is why I routinely tip 30 or 40% now, even when I can't afford it, because shit, that job. I remember getting finally 86'd, passing the bar, and some of the other servers were drinking and wanted me to join them. I didn't have friends at that job. I had my manager and these two guys from Afghanistan who were nice to me because I was so stupid and bad at the job that I must have evoked some kind of pathos, and taught me a few words of Farsi that I can't remember. So of course, even though I didn't stay and drink, it stuck out in my memory - the smooth, fake marble of the bar, the dim lights, the stools. I remember being offered a shot - I didn't take it. At that point in my life, I was not the kind of person who would have taken a shot offered by someone I barely knew at a job I hated and that hated me.

I drove home in my antique, gray Volvo. All over Manassas, I could see fireworks and huge big banks of rolling gray smoke amidst lightning from the summer storms. I will never forget the color of the clouds, all lit up in different ways - storm light, firework light, sulphur and the color it makes when all of those elements combine. A few miles from my parents house, I ran into a DUI checkpoint which seemed so funny to me at the time. No, officer, I really haven't been drinking. A half mile beyond it, I remembered that I had actually been required to do a wine sample for the evening's offerings before my shift and I felt so guilty; I really wanted to drive back around and tell them. 

Anyway, tonight smells like that night.