USA AT THE PUB

Day #2 of summer break ... Don't worry, I won't give you a day-by-day, play-by-play of my entire time off.  Today is important, though.  Today is USA World Cup Soccer Day, the day that will determine if we continue on from the Group of Death or not. 

I head down to Newton to meet up with my son and his friend, who is also a teacher.  Son has taken the day off of work, so the three of us are going to a pub near his house to watch the game.  The place isn't too crowded, but, then again, it is basically a bar, and it is only 11:45 a.m. on a Thursday.  It's probably not peak time for the place.

The game starts at noon, and we strategically sit at the corner of the bar, able to watch both the USA vs. Germany game and the Portugal vs.Ghana game, which also figures into the USA team's chances of moving on to the knock-out round.  The barkeep asks us if we want to order food, and we decide to wait a little bit.

Bad decision.

Apparently the pub staff did not count on a heavy workday crowd because within minutes the place is packed, not one open table or stool, and the bartender is having a tough time keeping up with the orders.  His lone cook pokes his head out once and only once -- the guy deserves battle pay today.  By the time the national anthems have been sung, the entire pub is knee-deep in chicken wings and beer. 

At one point after Ghana has scored on the opposite television screen, someone in the bar cheers.  We all jump on him to stop cheering because we need Ghana's goal differential to stay low (nonexistent would've been better).  Poor guy didn't know he was amongst serious futbol fans in a small pub around the corner from the police station.  We forgive him and crawl back under two baskets of wings and three mugs of beer.

In the end, even though USA loses in a rainy slug-fest, the team advances.  The diving, though still embarrassingly blatant, isn't as horrible as some of the other games, but there is still a fair amount of B-movie-level acting going on.  Within fifteen minutes of the games ending, the bar is practically a ghost town again.

I go home the back way, an experiment to avoid commuter traffic, and I only screw up the directions once.  I end up in Woburn instead of Billerica, which is fine because I know my way home from both towns.  I avoid the highway like the plague, which I encounter four times while driving over it and under it and around it, and each time it is at a four-lane stand-still parking lot.  I also realize that even though it has taken me longer to get home because I went the wrong way, I still get home six miles shorter than I do taking the highway, and it has been a much more relaxing drive (even with the screw-ups).  I even realize that the tapas place I've been to is pretty close to my son's house.  I make a mental note to mention it the next time we're hanging out --

-- which won't be Tuesday.  I have Tuesday off, but I know my son doesn't.  Game is on at 3:30, I believe.  Any takers?  I know a great pub...