It's Hard to Find a Silent Orchestra

There's something exciting to have your favorite cousin finally be of legal drinking age. Finally after years of her stealing some of your Kahlua on family vacations and your left over beers when you are too tipsy to keep track anymore, you can finally go out to a bar, order a mixed drink and have a conversation about life and the bullshit associated with it without feeling like you're the worse influence ever.

My first winter single after ending a nearly 9 year relationship happen to be the first winter that my "little" cousin turned twenty-one, she happen to be somewhat newly single, so the obvious thing to do was bar hop!

One cold, snowy, icy Friday night, we decided that it was a good night to find karaoke. But here's the thing about New England, there are not very many bars have trouble filling the stools on Friday nights in the middle of the winter. Considering the extreme cold, early night fall, and constant threat of pending storms, there is not very much to do for an individual on a friday nigh, so they file in two by two, into their local watering hole, and sip the cold away hoping to stave off frost bite and loneliness.

So with smart phones in hand we started a google search for some loud off key singing teamed with cold drinks and cute boys. We found a list of bar that said that they hosted karaoke, but the majority of them were either in some shady neighborhoods, or there were places that we knew were more likely to be filled with lecherous old men, and sourly expired women.

Finally we decided to wing it, and head to a bar that we knew had karaoke at least once in a while, so we hoped this night would be a once.

The snow had basically stopped for the night but it was terribly cold, and most parking lots and streets were not completely plowed yet. Again for anyone not familiar with how such weather works, a thin, packed down layer of snow looks like it would be an inviting path, but in reality its a slippery death trap. This is common knowledge to most people who have lived in the north east, but apparently not to my cousin.

When entering the bar, much to our dismay, not only was it not karaoke night, it was apparently, "high-school kids stayed super late after they finished dinner" night, the bar, which was also a restaurant during the day was packed with kids that looked about 16 years old, all drinking cola from their clear glasses, while they meandered around mingling with each other. It took about 4 seconds for us to turn to each other and with out words agree that this was not the place we were going to be occupying for the night. I walked out the door walked the two steps from the door to the parking lot and headed to my car. With out turning around I started talking, got to the end of my thought and paused for a reply....
None came.
I turned only to find my cousin, sitting on the wet ground. "What are you doing?!"
"I fell!"
"What do you mean you fell?"
"I mean I fell, I slipped on the ice."
I looked down, sure as hell her ass was placed firmly on a patch of ice. I looked at the door, at the steps, at the ice and then at my cousin, "...how?" The ice was two feet in the opposite direction of the car from the door.
"I thought I could clear the ice if I jumped this way... I couldn't."
I walked over and helped her to her feet, still confused by her logic.
"My butt's all wet" She pouted all the way back to the car.
"I will swing by your house so you can change." I turned the key over and blasted the heat and the radio. Her house wasn't more than two Iphone tracks away from the bar so I put a lot of faith in my "random shuffle" and pressed play on my phone.
I pulled onto her street about a song and a half later and did the best I could to park and avoid the snow embankment that the plow had created on the side of the road.
She climbed out of the car over the snow and to the door, like a pro, she was back at the front door in less than 10 minutes, I felt a sense of pride in the fact that she can get out of the house so quickly and still look cute, accrediting it to years of demanding that she hurry up when I would let her hang out with me and my friends and refuse to wait for her ever.
She made her way back to the car and no more than three feet away, she disappeared. Like a trap door had opened under her she dropped down below my line of sight.
"What the Fuck!" I heard her over the radio that was easily at half volume. I opened my door and stepped out of the car.
"What happen?!" I yelled to her.
"I fell again!"
"Are you serious?"
"No I'm jokingly sitting on the wet ground. I'll be right back" she made her way back to the door, and with just the slightest of a wrong step, fell again.
"Mother, Shit, God Damn, Asshole!" she had been swearing since she was 13 years old, but never had I heard a string of profanity from her like this.
"What are you doing?! What is wrong with you?"
"That is it, let's go." she said as she climbed into my car, wet ass and all.
"Where are we going?"
"At this point I don't care, I just want a drink, go to the closest bar."
"Are you sure?"
"Go!" she shot me a look that said 'ask again and I will push you in the snow.'
I put the car into gear and rolled down the street. I knew where a close bar was and if it were like any other time I was there, it would be pretty dark.
No more than  fifteen minutes later I pulled into the parking lot and we made our way to the door. 

This bar, which has since closed, was a bit of a townie bar. It was often occupied by middle aged divorcees who are fond of animal prints and  a lot of sequance. Their male counterparts are Italian-American men from town in their early to mid twenties, who spend more time in the tanning box and salon in a month than I do in the  bathroom in a year.

We spent the rest of the night drinking domestic beers and people watching, this being a favorite activity for the both of is. There was no karaoke, but watching drunk guidos fist pump, and hit on cougars, very easily the next best thing.