When Life Gives You Lemonz

I decided to change the name of the bar from its real name to a code name. I chose the name Lemonz. There's a story behind that name change. I totally chuckled to myself when the name came upon me.

It all started about midpoint in my Lemonz career. It was just another weekday shift, somewhere after lunch and before Jeopardy at 3:30 p.m. The usual suspects were there, but we were still waiting on some principles, such as Fess and the hairy, crude, cement-dusty, mostly-related-to-each-other-somehow, loveable-lump construction crew he rolled with. Fess fucked with me relentlessly, and it was usually great, because I threw it right back. It was comedy. Sometimes he went too far and had to wait a hot minute for a cold beer, but we usually got along famously.

My cousin-in-law, Heidi, whom I recruited to work with me, and I were doing our thing--opening Miller Lite after Bud Light after "Whatever's on special today." We were shucking and jiving with our regulars, we were having fun at work. Fess always compared himself to Butters from South Park, referring to the episode where Butters becomes infatuated with a cocktail waitress at a Hooters-type establishment that I do believe was called Lemons. We all cracked up because the flat-chested cocktail waitresses were all sweetness and light on their shifts, but as soon as their time was up, they were like, "Later, loser." It was especially funny, of course, because Heidi is stacked-the joke was on me (and if you can't take a joke about having small tits at a sausage party, then bartending is not the job for you).

So, Fess became Butters.

There we are, mid-shift and in rolls Butters and the boys. Heidi cracks open and places beers before them as I cut the fruit at the back of the island. I delivered my line to Butters. "Hi, honey!" I squeaked, voice dripping with false enthusiasm, like the cocktail waitress in the episode. When I saw them coming through the doors, I had placed two lemon halves in my tee shirt. I strutted up to him with my weird lemon boobs pointing straight at him. "Welcome to Lemons!"

It was hysterical. Sure, you probably had to be there, but it's a memory that still makes me laugh out loud to this day. That was my kind of job. Sigh. So, anyway, now that I've opened the vault on that memory bank, I figured I'd change the name of the joint to protect the innocent and guilty alike. Not that anyone from Tinley other than River reads this, but whatever. Lemonz. Heh heh. Good times.