"How about that Tupac? He is a great rapper"

A couple of weeks ago I went down to DC for a much needed 3-day vacation before quitting my job. It was in DC that I met the newest character in the comedy of errors that is my life. Let us call him "Jeremy".

::Scene:: Local brew house in the Chinatown area of DC. Sunday Night. Two girls enter after dinner to have a quiet beer. As the two girls sip their drinks, they notice a lone man, age unknown, who pulls up at the bar next to them. He pulls out a phone, one that i mistakenly believed to be a blackberry, but then later realized it was just a nokia cell phone, circa 2000. He orders some obscure german drink that comes with a champagne-esque cork, and an extremely long glass. We stare.

Jeremy: Would you like to have a taste of my beer?
::L and A are totaly thrown off by this complete stranger's offer of a sip of his beverage. Could he be trusted? L looks down at his shoes and sees tennis shoes circa 1999, and high white socks..all worn with shorts, and thinks "no" to herself.::
L: You know, I am good with my beer right now...::L thinks to herself and adds, "and I don't share drinks with weird strangers with nokia phones from 2000"::
J: Alrighty then....so....what sort of music do you ladies like to listen to?
::Thrown off by this introductory question. Am used to such questions like, "do you come here often" or "What is your name, what do you do?">::
L: Gangsta Rap. I love Gangsta rap, dirty south rap, too...but the more gangsta, the better.
J: You know who is a great rapper? That Tupac Shakur. He can thrown down some rhymes. He is very talented.

The scene comes to a screeching halt. This was the first indication (other than the unsolicited invite for a sip of his drink) that there was something NOT RIGHT about this guy. Did he realize that Tupac had been dead for more than 10 years? Was that the only rapper he had ever heard of? No Jay-Z? No Kanye??

L: You know he's been dead for like...10..years right?
::Jeremy looks puzzled, and does not speak::
Amy: I like death cab, etc
J: You know who I love? Ben Harper. He is just so fresh and current and great.
::Another puzzling song choice. While we all loved Ben Harper back in say.....2003...I would never classify him as "fresh" and "current"::
J: He wrote this great song, you should youtube the video. It is a song with pictures of the actor named Heath who died. It is very moving

It turns out, that our gentleman caller was a 32 year old aiming to get his community college degree. He had spent the last 10+ years in Germany, working in an unspecified army job, and more recently, he was an "intern" at bnp paribas. We soon realized that because he had been out of the country for hte last 10 years, his cultural references were totally and completely dated. Examples:

1) He thought Tupac was alive
2) He asked us if we had seen in any good movies in the theaters lately, and he mentioned the last 3 movies he saw in the theaters. They were released in 2002.
3) His cell phone was from 2000.

He was also a weird romantic. He told me that Annie Hall was the most romantic movie he had ever seen, and he wanted to go to New York to walk past the Tiffany's store that he had seen so many times in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

We continued to talk to Jeremy for a long while. He told us we were very intelligent because we have read books. He told us his favorite author is John Grishom. He also told us about "german traditions" like how in Germany, people bring cakes to work for birthdays, and they have special "German Traditions" called the "JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge" race. I broke it to him that all of those things happen in the united states too, but he argued with me and told me it was a "special" german tradition.

As the evening came to a close, we begin to realize that we are probably the first two people this guy has spoken to in 10 years, as he seems on the brink of panic that we are leaving him. He pulls out the nokia, and the dreaded question comes out: "...So, do you think maybe we could all exchange contact information...."

Note to self: do not give clingy 30 somethings who apparently have no friends contact information, because they will then proceed to call 230329 times, text 392 times, and email once. And even if you tell them, "wrong number", the will say, "that is weird, because I met someone who was named Lane..."

Maybe I shouldn't be picky...lest I end up at the dreaded Table for One. Read more