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You may have seen people like him.
He seems a bit awkward. Personality can be a bit overbearing. Can get a wee bit loud and a mite clingy. Thinks all of his own jokes are funnier than they are.
Impresses that he has never been very popular. In school he probably wasn't. At work, just one of the crowd. Recedes to the background on the everyday canvas.
And then he walks into his bar.
By "his bar" I mean that place where he's gone to for years. That place "where everybody knows (his) name."
It's the place where it's hellos and first names all around. It's the place where he has direct access to the power structure. Glad hands the bartender. Slaps the back of the owner. They laugh and swap clichés. It's his pocket of importance, his womb of specialness.
He stays a long time. It's Friday night and he's looked forward to it all week.
By day he's a knob in a factory or a paper shifter in an office or a lackey at a construction site.
But here he stands out. Here he's well-known. Here he can find himself the center of attention; he tastes the succor of popularity; it hits him like a cherry-bomb shot and its jolt of Red Bull caffeine.
If he wasn't there it would be noticed.
There is a place I drop in on a couple of times a month. He's always there.
I saw him last Friday. A middle aged man. Mustachioed. Something in his hair to fight off the gray.
I was having a glass of wine and dinner when he ambled across my path on his way to the bathroom.
He recognized me, though not in name. We've never been formerly introduced, never talked. I'm not so much a regular I guess. He nodded and I back. This between his high volume one liners and his self-appreciating cackle as he bounced confidently across the floor.
This is his place. The owner smiling, the bartender shaking her head. He waves through the kitchen door window to the cook who shouts and waves back.
Most eyes flash in the direction of his noise, even if for some it is out of curiosity and nothing more. Here he's used to the attention.
Here he's special, and who am I to begrudge him?
We spend our lives trying to find our way. Trying to find our place to fit in. We live on an ever shifting sieve until we drop into our niche.
Life is like a clothing store. We try on and try on until something fits, feels and looks just right. If we're lucky we find it.
If we're lucky we find a slot specially made for us. And if we're ever missing from it we're missed.
Every person needs to know they're special. Every person deserves to feel that from time to time. Wouldn't it be something if everyone could experience a genuine standing ovation just one time?
We all need our bastion of significance.
This is his.
Happy life.
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