Ray-Ban

He came into the bar wearing a funny little hat and sunglasses on top. With him was a smiling girl half his age who was apparently his girlfriend. Before he could sit down, there was a heavy banging on the window that made me almost jump off my stool. In front of the window was a weird looking guy that jumped up and down and made a gesture like: order me a beer and fast! The man pointed at his forehead but did order three beers and sat down with his young girlfriend.

The jumpy man had placed a bicycle against the window and came in to join them. After sipping from his beer, he started jumping again. This time he had a goal: he tried to grab the sunglasses.
The man with the hat pushed him away and said to me: “He can’t help it, he’s from Norway.” The other laughed and made another try. It was another miss. But when the man took a sip of his pint and had his head a bit lowered, he half succeeded. He was pushed away with the same comment.

The girlfriend told me there was something special with these glasses. The man had just found them again after loosing them fourteen days before. They had been placed on top of a fence. This was very nice because they had been quite expensive: they were real Ray-Bans. You would expect that people would take these home when finding them. So he was very lucky and felt very happy about it.

I couldn’t see the happiness any more; the Norwegian guy must have been annoying him for quite a while already. Still he said, in a sort of trance: “He can’t help it, he’s from Norway.” When he went outside and made a joint, the Norwegian helped him smoke it and was a bit relaxed for a while. But the jumping started again and the man growled something that made the Norwegian stop. He walked outside and started making funny faces in front of the window and banging on it.

Two other men came in and one joined the Ray-Ban-man. The Norwegian started a conversation with the other one. The daughter of the owner of the bar made her entrance with her boyfriend: she was wearing tiny hotpants and a top that was completely open at the back, so that she could show she had an even suntan. The man made comments about the kneading of her buttocks by the boyfriend. He tried to look very angry and dangerous. The man shrugged and went on with his conversation. I don’t have a clue what they were talking about. All seemed quiet…

Suddenly he jumped up, broke the neck of a bottle and pushed it in the other man’s face. Blood splattered around, I sure got my share. I’m not much of a hero, so in five seconds flat I was outside. I could see that half the bar had jumped in to have a part in this fight. I decided to stay safe and walked on to a little park nearby. Here I sat down on a bench, tried to calm down. The whole scene really scared me, I didn’t expect this at all.

After some time I decided to walk home, but knew I had to walk past that bar again. Nothing happened when I did. But soon after the door flew open and the man was pushed out by one of the staff. “You are banned for life from this bar!”, he shouted.

Slowly the man walked away, the broken Ray-Bans in his hands.
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