Saturday, October 11, 2008

Conversational Trump Card

My wife won gift certificates to the Barley House - she calls radio stations and wins stuff often - so we had a wonderful dinner for $.65 plus tip. I ordered a Guinness, which when it arrived had been poured so perfectly it looked artificial. The guy at the next table echoed my wife's comment that it was too perfect to touch.

He then mentioned he had toured the Guinness facility in Ireland in the 1960's when they still did most of it by hand. There simply is no trump comment to that. We narcissists are finely attuned to one-upmanship, but he had started at a level that blows out all competition. Where do you go from there? Ah yes, my son Benjamin was named after the earl, who was his godfather. He might have been on that tour with you. Bit of an eccentric, liked to go about disguised as a hops-loader.

No, there's nothing for it. The man turned out to be a Southern Californian up with his wife to see the foliage and was a very pleasant conversationalist. But even had he turned out to be a boring blowhard, he had scored sublimely with his opening gambit.

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