A Visit To The Suburbs

Tonight was great fun. Brad, me and our friend Kim all took a trip out to the burbs for some good ol' Texas fun. Although I despise the burbs I sometimes like to venture out on the weekends. I always feel refreshed when we drive back home and I remember why I like living in the city. It was that and the fact that the downtown area where I live had been overrun by UT and OU fans for the annual Texas-OU showdown a the Cotton Bowl at Fair Park.

We drove out to the north-west of downtown Dallas. Past DFW airport where microcosms of cities are defined by the evenly placed clusters of chain restaurants, big box retail stores, and car dealerships. Our first destination: Chili's. Chili's is one of my favorite places to go when I visit the burbs. It is here that you can get a tasty and reliable meal and dine with the locals. Its always fun to observe their customs.

Tonight was special. We noticed a pack of three girls emerge from the restroom all in modest dresses. The one on the middle had a dazzling array of glittering fake diamonds around her neck and ears. It was obviously the night of their homecoming dance and their dates took them to Chili's. We all agreed the scene was pathetic and depressing.

We continued to observe other local color and enjoyed our Jose Cuervo margaritas. Brad ordered a large blue specialty margarita and proclaimed, "Its so hard to drink these things without looking like a queer." What else can a grown man look like while drinking a blue margarita out of a oversized martini glass? Our food came and it is my custom to always tease Kim about her picky eating habits. She usually responds with some comment about how she tries to broaden her horizons but tonight her response was, "Shut up. You dont know about the things that I eat!" She said it kind of loud and we all looked around to see if anyone else heard and then burst out laughing ourselves.



After we finished our meal we headed to our next destination: The Main Event (TME). TME is a giant arcade, bowling, pool hall, laser tag place. On our way over to TME we drove by an Olive Garden. Out of it streamed more pubescent teenagers dressed in semi formal wear no doubt headed to their homecoming dance in the school gym. We walked into the giant box and the odor of rented bowling shoes and the sounds of 80s pop filled the air. It was a nice change from the uptight scene of the downtown set. We reservered a lane and got to bowling. It wasnt long before the fluorescent lighting went down and the black lights and strobes got going. We were fully immersed in one of suburbias most treasured Staurday night festivites, Cosmic Bowling.

After our exertions on the bowling alley we turned our attentions to the arcade. After several games of air hockey and ski ball we decided we had our fill of suburban nightlife. We took our points that we had earned from ski ball over to the counter and cashed them in for a green hackey sack with a frog's face on it, our consolation prize for having blown $10 on cheap thrills. After attemping to display our hackey sack abilities we decided to make our way to the car and get back to the Big D.