We had lunch here in Las Vegas yesterday with two of my most favorite people in the entire universe, Alice and Tom Henningsen from Chicago. Vivian and I had not seen them in at least a dozen years, but Tom and I are constantly emailing each other.
When the Barnings published Baseball Hobby News (1979-93), Tom was one of our premier writers. He and I are huge baseball fans and our emails always end with the name of an old ballplayer, often obscure. I might sign off as Hank Sauer and he as Andy Pafko.
Tom is a long-suffering Chicago Cubs fan and lives and mostly dies with each of their seasons. The last time the Cubs were in the World Series was the same year that he was born, 1945. He still can't get over the Cubs blowing the pennant to the New York Mets in 1969, collapsing in the National League championship series with the San Diego Padres in 1984 and don't even mention the 2003 Bartman incident to him. Cubs fan Steve Bartman interfered with a foul ball in the playoffs and might have cost the team a trip to the World Series.
We had lunch with the Henningsens at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville restaurant on the Las Vegas Strip. Most of the waitresses in the touristy restaurants in Vegas are young and attractive. Ours was both. I noticed that her arms had some very artistic tattoos and I commented, "Nice tats." I mean, how many guys my age would are so thoroughly modern that they would know the current lingo is "tats."
She gave me a look that indicated mild or amused puzzlement. Tom tapped me on the shoulder and whispered in my ear, "She thinks you said he has nice tits. You should have said "nice ink." So much for being modern.
I explained to her what I meant, and added that she also had nice, well, you know. Our waitress was far from offended. In Vegas, just about anything goes.
1 comment:
Thank you for the clarification- growing up in Brooklyn the first 8 years of my life- I thought “tats” was part of an everyday trio: dozs bums lost again, dem shoes are nice and tats what I want
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