The Luckiest Man Alive

         It was a really cold winter. Not only was the temperature consistently below zero but there was a biting wind that penetrated even the woolliest of sweaters and the four pairs of socks I had come into the habit of wearing. It was around Christmas and I was working late one night at the bar. I know it was around Christmas because I remember thinking how Donna kept nagging me to put the lights up on the roof of the house. Doesn’t she know that it involves a good level of physical labor? I work all night just to put food on the table and she won’t even give me a few hours of peace at home to relax and reflect upon my day like a normal guy! No, she wants me up and about constantly doing chores for her, as if I don’t need any down time. I’m not in my thirties (or even my forties) anymore and I don’t really appreciate her treating me like her very own personal Mephistopheles, I should have realized she’d sold her soul to the Devil long before I married her.

         Anyway, I was working late at the bar one night when the wind blew this odd fellow in. It must have been a weeknight because business was slow and the tips were bad. He was real tall and mysterious, like one of those characters from those old movies my mom used to watch when I was a kid. He took off his hat and brushed some snow off of his boots before sitting down on one of the stools, the one all the way on the end to the left where the Doctor usually sits after a long day looking down throats and bandaging broken bones. At any rate, he sat down on the stool and I says to him, “Hey buddy what can I getcha?”

        He was all weird and silent, pensive-like, before ordering a glass of milk. Now I found this mighty curious, who orders a glass of milk at a bar on a weeknight? Now normally I would’ve just gone into the kitchen and served the guy his milk, but I was really bewildered by this guy. Don’t get me wrong, business is business, so I still got the damned milk but I couldn’t resist the tantalizing temptation of mystery, so I asked him, straight-up, what he was all about.

      “Now what kind of a guy orders milk at a bar on a weeknight?”

      “I’m experiencing my second childhood,” he replied.

      “Really, would you like me to warm that glass up and sing you a lullaby too?”

      “No, cold’s fine. And I have an ulcer, that’s what the milk’s for, it helps settle it down.”

      “What stresses you out so much that you’ve got ulcers? Does your wife keep pestering you to put a sparkly rendition of Rudolf and his eight reindeer buddies up on the roof?”

      “No, I’m the luckiest man alive.”