Channelling Holden Caulfield

I had quite the Holden Caulfield experience at a popular restaurant recently. Is it just me or are we fast becoming a race of phonies?

This group of young people sitting at the table right next to us, phony girls with their hair all straightened and all, looking like bloody clones of each other. Sitting there with their lousy boyfriends all trying to be so interested in each other. That really gets me you know, you take a phony guy like that with his hair all gelled and him reeking of cologne, knowing it took him like an hour of preening before he went out, a guy like that nine times out of ten has no interest in what the girl he’s with is saying. But its not like that fake girl with the film of make-up is saying anything of interest anyhow. That kills me. Really it does, two phonies having the fakest conversation, a bloody waste of time and oxygen.

But then they did something that really knocked me out. The girl, the one with the hair all straightened and all, she pulls out a camera. A bloody camera. And starts taking pictures of herself and the phony guy. Goodness, that nearly killed me. But the saddest thing is that they really thought they were so darn gorgeous, puffing away the hookah. And they really believed it too, if you went there with a pistol and tried to convince them otherwise they wouldn’t budge. And you can bet those pictures would be going up on Facebook like within an hour if they could manage it.

So what I did was, I sat there and tried to see if I could spot all the phonies from the real people. Boy, it wasn’t an easy thing to do. There was this group of people all sitting on the couch not really talking to each other, just sitting around, sipping on their drinks trying to look all important but they just looked bored to me. Then what happens, these three other girls come up to them, and it looks like they know each other because they greet with those brief smiles. But then, none of them get up or move over to give these girls a seat. None of them, not even the guys. So, what happens is these three girls sort of stand in like the centre of the group, trying not to look too stupid. Boy, that was lame.

Then the lamest thing by far happened. I mean you think a night is going by pretty lame and then wham something even lamer happens. And its not like I’m making this up or anything, it really happened. The waiter comes over and leans in to this girl at our table with a message from the guy at the table across. “Can he buy her a drink?” Holy smokes, do people still do phony things like that? So we look over and there’s this elderly guy trying so hard to be all suave and seductive from across the bloody table. Man, that got me. And its not like he was kidding around or anything, he was honest to God serious. Bloody hell. He even sent over a folded napkin and a pen to get her bloody number.