SAUCEBOX MILLENNIALS ON BROADWAY

via tripadvisor.com

Nothing good happens after midnight? Even for Saucebox Millennials?

Go out with a group of millennials you’ve known since birth, kindergarten, or grade school, and you’ll see something familiar.

They party like baby boomers in their twenties.

They drink drinks and talk and carry on like barflies.

There might be one among them who needs a nap, one who needs a fight.

If you’ve got eight of them in tow, the numbers work in downtown Portland.

There the old man was, enveloped in deafening hip hop with these guys all singing along.

“How do know the words?” I asked.

“We all know the words.”

“Is this a new song?”

“About fifteen year old song.”

“Like oldies? Classic rock?”

“Call it vintage hip hop.”

It wasn’t the first time I’ve been musically out of touch. I found the groove, found the beat, but didn’t dance.

There was dancing going on, but not the dance I learned last week.

One of the guys got up with a girl. Someone from another group grabbed her.

The two guys practiced their death stare on each other. I could hear the ticking.

In a friendly geezer sort of way I slid over their direction, turned my back to the stranger, and asked the guy I knew which way he wanted to go.

Call it a diversion, waving my arms one way then the other.

“Let’s go this way,” I said, heading toward the door.

The other guy followed.

The two of them eyeballed one another for round two. It didn’t look good. Late night, violence potential, what to do?

“Stop looking at the guy. You could take him. You know it. Why bother? Don’t give him a story to tell his pals,” I told the Saucebox millennials.

And it worked.

I repeated the incident to my wife back at the table, yelling it toward her.

“Was he the guy in the red jacket?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“He grabbed me, too. We danced. He ditched his other dance partner and we flew around until he grabbed someone else.”

I looked around for the grabby guy.

“Who are you looking for?”

“I’m going to the bathroom.”

“No, you’re not. The guy in the red jacket is over there.”

Since I was the voice of reason at two in the morning I wasn’t looking for angry guy. It was sort of interesting he decided to toss a young lady off the dance floor, bar floor, for my wife.

“Where did he grab you?”

“By the arm.”

“Probably mistook you for one of the twenty-something babes?”

“Had to.”

When you hear about turning lemons into lemonade, you never think about mistaking sixty year olds for twenty five year olds.

I wanted to know if that’s what happened, but we left. The Saucebox millennials left, too.

I never stay out so late, but this night was different.