Teenage Therapy

What an insane day.

After I finished that Starbucks Chai I went into a work meeting to recap the disaster of "Top Five Worst Day of My Career" and, without intention, I burst into tears. So that sucked. Sucked bad. I hope work never sucks this bad ever again.

Anyhow, after the bursting into tears I left work because Jenni is more important than advertising. Let's repeat, I'm more important than advertising. So I left to get myself together. I went home, cried more, got my sh*t together and went to the beach (hooray for living in Hawaii where a bad day at work becomes a day at the beach!). Then I got a pedicure and an ice cream cone. And finally I felt a little more human.

At the end of the day I met Bryan and we went to our favorite Greek place for dinner (hooray for Greek food!). Now, YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THIS... we walk up to the restaurant and who could I possibly see at a table but... CLIENT WHO RESULTED IN MY CRYING AT WORK. And I had to say hi because that was the only option. She's a very, very nice woman. We just have work issues. She's not a meanie or anything. She was there with her sister - they get dinner every Thursday night. Nice and cute, right? Okay, and now it gets good. Because after we make small talk and basic introductions, THEY INVITE US TO SHARE THEIR TABLE. Client who made me cry. So of course we take them up on the table. Tables are hard to come by in this place and we were hungry. All was fine until they got up to leave at which point my client chose to heart-feltly leave her hand on my shoulder for an uncomfortable amount of time as she assured me everything would be okay. Nothing makes me want to cry more than when someone is obviously nice when I'm upset. So she's being nice and I'm internally coaching myself "don't cry, she'll leave soon. don't cry. don't cry." I didn't cry. She did leave. AND, she left her wine glass. So now not only do I need to be nice and professional with her, I need to personally return her wine glass. ARGH!

Okay, but it gets better. To make up for our good table luck, Bryan and I invited two people to share our table. Turns out to be a Grandma and a grandson. Grandson lives here. Grandma is from Napa. Grandson looks to me to be 12. He's going to be a sophmore (so he's 15, right? He'd hate me if he knew I thought he was 12). And he's wearing a Led Zeppelin t-shirt. At first he wants absolutely nothing to do with us because I imagine we are incomprehensibly old. He probably thinks we're 30 or something. OLD! But then Bryan creates a spark in his eye when he asks him if he likes Wolf Mother. Uh, what? Kid does not really like them. He prefers Megadeth. Well, excuuuuuuse us! But this did start a very intense discussion between Bryan and the kid about rock bands. And is just had me grinning from ear to ear. Subtle debate over the merits of Pantera and Metallica. Not to mention the kid's uncle knows the guy from AC-DC. Take that! Then conversation moved to lacrosse and fun of hitting kids with the metal lacrosse sticks. We briefly touched on how lame Green Day is. Oh really? Uh, okay. And had a topline discussion about surfing on the South Shore. This sweet 12 year-old looking high school kid could not have produced a more dis-interested look or tone in his voice but he kept talking with us. And it was fun! It absolutely made my day. This may sound kooky but there is nothing I like better than winning the approval of a kid. Which encourages me again to consider teaching as a career. Regardless, aside from sharing our Greek table with an actor from LOST, no one else would have been better than this kid.

My favorite quote from the entire evening may have been this question posed by Bryan to the woman who works at the Greek wine shop.... "Where can you get good oatmeal around here?" I promise you, it was as completely out of context as you might imagine. It had me in giggles for a good 5 minutes.