Today’s post is brought to you by my friend Mike. If you’ve been here before, which I’m assuming is the case, you know about Mike. If not, check out his blog. And wait in anticipation for Wednesday when his lovely wife Heather, my friend & business partner, will offer up some fun of her own.

And after reading this post you’ll know why they’re my kind of people.

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There’s an awesome bar down the street from our place. It has sports on big screen TVs, video trivia, great appetizers, and, oh yeah, plenty o’ beer. Back in the day my wife, Heather, and I used to plow through a couple pitchers of beer and a crap load of chicken wings there while kicking everyone’s asses at trivia until the beer wet our brains so much that we couldn’t even remember the name of the handyman on “One Day At A Time.” (Schneider, of course.) Eventually we’d stumble home drunk and happy.

Once our beloved little angel Madeline was born last year, however, our trips to this bar stopped. Actually, they stopped even before that – when Heather got pregnant. Every once in a while one of us will go down there with a friend while the other watches the baby, but even those trips have been few and far between for a long while.

This all changed last night when Heather called on her way home and suggested that we go out for dinner. After throwing around the names of our usual “baby friendly” restaurants, Heather said, “Wouldn’t it be great it be great if we could somehow go watch the Dodgers’ game at our old bar?” This comment, after a few minutes of discussion, lead to me calling the bar and getting involved in this awkward exchange:

The phone rings until one of the female bartenders answers.

Bartender: “Hi! This is (Name of our bar)!

Me: “Yeah, uh, can people until twenty-one go to your bar as long as they don’t drink?”

Bartender: “I think legally, yeah, but we only card at the door, so we can’t have like, you know, a twenty year old in here ’cause if they ask for a drink and we give it to them we could get in trouble, you know?”

Me: “What if they weren’t twenty? What if they were like, uh, you know, young enough that you could tell just by looking at them they weren’t old enough to drink?”

BARTENDER: “Well, I’ve seen some teenagers who look twice their age. How young we talking here?”

ME: “Young.”

BARTENDER (growing frustrated): “How young?!?!”

ME: “A baby. It’s an, uh, baby.”

There’s a long, awkward pause on the line.

BARTENDER: “Let me ask the manager.”

Another long, awkward pause passes. Maddie suddenly starts crying loudly as the line is picked back up.

BARTENDER: “That the baby?”

ME: “Yeah, I need to feed her. So can she come to the bar?”

BARTENDER: “Um, uh, yes. The manager said that should be okay.”<

ME: "Great!"

Maddie cries loudest yet as I hang up the phone.

That call may have been very awkward, and a bit too much like that scene in the Reese Witherspoon film Sweet Home Alabama (“You have a baby…in a bar!”), but it nonetheless lead to Heather and I sitting in a secluded booth eating chicken wings, drinking beer, and watching the Dodgers’ game as a happy Maddie hung off my chest in her baby bjorn and played with her toys.

Here’s the photo I sent along with my application to the “Father of the Year” committee:

I don’t think we’ll be taking Maddie back to the bar anytime soon, but it was a nice break from our usual routine of family restaurants. And hey…just think of all the street cred Maddie will have now when she talks to all the other babies?

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