A Revisit to Downtown

I've got to be honest here...I picked up a few shifts at my old stomping grounds recently. "Recently" as in about a month ago.

I put on the old shirt, and tucked the familiar rags under my belt and sat at the same familiar door to check a bunch of IDs of a bunch of kids who looked frighteningly much younger than I remembered them looking.

It was exactly the same. Only, the people I used to know weren't around anymore. The regulars I remembered were fewer and father between IDs that I checked than I remembered. But the same fucking stupid ass lines were identical to the ones I began hearing when I started so many years ago:

"But my friend is in there! Let me in!" No.

"You're kicking me out? But I don't know where my flip flops went....or my shirt." Oh, geez. Just get out.

"Are you serious? My clothes are too baggy?" Yes, shithead. Jesus...this argument again?

"I've never seen you before! Are you new here?" Sure. I'm new. It's my first night.

I picked up a few shifts as a favor, but also because I was interested in seeing what it was still like. Mostly it was a favor, but when I found myself in the middle of an extremely bad situation that was about to get much worse, I had to wonder exactly what I was getting paid that night. It took about a split second for the girl-screaming to turn into girl-punching and hair-pulling.

As I took a very uncooperative girl into a hold to restrain her, I waited for the sucker punch to come from her pissed off boyfriend. Luckily for me, it never came and I managed to finish that particular night unscathed, which was fantastic.

The shifts I picked up ended eventually and we cleaned up and proceeded to binge drink like the old days.

Honestly, I'm glad I did it and perhaps I'll do it again soon if they'll let me. But it was nice to know that the next weekend I didn't have to show up again.