So Saturday night I attended my first auction (forever to be called Boobs on Display). It was one of these school deals where the proceeds go to the school for things like a librarian, computers, PE teacher, music program, etc. Apparently the taxes I pay aren't enough to cover any of that. All ranting aside, I showed up at this thing failing to pre-cocktail and the night was ruined from the onset. I'm not a big hobnobber. Don't get me wrong, I like to socialize with the best of 'em and I enjoy meeting new people and making them laugh with me or at me--it doesn't matter. It drives my wife crazy (just once she'd like to be the background couple), but she knew what she was getting into when she said "yes". Anyway, the first thing that I encountered were the boobed up mothers in the crowd. And they moved around in packs and checked each other out. "Cute outfit..I love your hair..where'd you get those shoes.." was flowing everywhere. So I went to the bar and guzzled a few trying to out run my social anxiety for these type of things. I had a pretty good lead at one point, but I tripped and that was that. You see, I got seated next to a guy that has a daughter in my sons kindergarten class. He was a doctor and did some undergrad studies at Davis, but he didn't really want to talk about that. More interested in talking about his time at UCLA and the med degree. Still cool with that, we talked about his job as an ER doctor, whether he ever worked on Griff, whether he like the social medicine idea, etc. So another lady at our table bought a playing card from a deck of cards to enter a raffle for a gift pack of wine worth $1,800. She held the 9 of diamonds. When they held the raffle, they announced her card and we all went nuts. It's exciting when somebody sitting that close to you wins one of these things. She stood up and made her way to the podium only to be duped by the emcee when he told her that he was just kidding. She came back to the table dejected. I thought it was pretty amazing that the first card he announced was hers despite it being the big loser and I made this known to the lady when she got back. She was a good sport about it. Again, I said it was amazing that out of 52 cards, hers was announced first. With that, Dr. So-and-So said, "yeah, you already said that." No smile, no nothing. Just drops a bomb on me as if to say shut up. With that, I dropped my knife and fork on my plate, wiped my mouth with my napkin, pushed my chair back and left. When the wife found me, she agreed it was time to leave and so we left. Not sure if I'm up for this type of thing again. I'll see when the time comes and no doubt, I'll be a bit greased before I step foot in there again.

Johnny GoFast