The waitress’s tits were spandex clad billboards advertising freckles and one cinnamon shaded mole. They were called Angel Shots—the drinks she carried, not her tits.

I had grown up in bars, shooting shuffleboard with the old men in their trucker hats while similar waitresses slugged plastic and glass pitchers of thin foamed suds onto wobbly tables while Glenn Frey sang Smuggler’s Blues on the old Wurlitzer jukeboxes that had the inevitable stain on the finish and cracked glass that made you shift your gaze to read half the song titles. Darts, pool, card tricks, beer nuts, whatever it took to keep a ten-year old kid occupied while his parents and their drinking buddies got drunk, laughed, and teased each other in the way that you only could in the 80s.

This particular night I was trying to balance the pillar salt shaker on its edge in a pile of spilled salt. I didn’t even notice the Angel Shots girl walk up to the table until Tom started talking.

Tom had been staying with us for awhile now. Mom said he was most likely on the run from the IRS. He was always drunk he was always obnoxious. He had a signature pickup line that he used on every woman he met, regardless of the social atmosphere.

He would look at them; brush the beer from his handlebar mustache, and say, “How do you feel about anal sex?”

We all knew what was coming as the Angel Shooter girl walked up to the table and set her tray of test tube shooters on the table, followed by her ample breasts which set perfectly on the table like a shelf.

Tom’s eyes grew large and he wailed a suppressed, “wheeeh!”

My old man was sitting next to the waitress and he raised up off his seat to look down the girl’s blouse further.

Her reaction was immediate and full of disgust. She pulled back, her breasts remaining firmly on the table, and said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing!”

The old man was too shocked by her reaction to say anything but my mom jumped in by pushing the waitress’s tray of test tubes right into her tits and said, “Look, bitch; if you don’t want them to look at your tits then don’t shove them in their faces.”

My mother has never been a great draft beer drinker and tonight was one of the greatest not so great times of her draft swilling life.

The girl backed away from the table completely, the tray of drinks crashing to the floor and breaking and pouring out underneath the high stools under our feet.

The manager came rushing over from behind the bar with his stained towel in his hands. The smell of bleach from the towel was overwhelming as he assumed the spot formerly occupied by breasts and shooters.

He asked what happened and told us that Shannon was in the break room crying and said something about sexual harassment. My mother cut him off at these words and said, “She shouldn’t be sticking her tits in peoples faces if she doesn’t want them looking.”

The manager held up his hands in a stop gesture and said, “I’d like you to apologize to her.”

That was it. She threw her coaster at him and said, “You little needle dick motherfucker. How dare you…”

And that was truly it because the manager was on the phone with the cops and we were all escorted from the bar to the car. I had to drive because I was the only one who hadn’t been drinking.

On the way out, the manager snapped a Polaroid of my mother and, waving it for development, said, “Don’t come back.”

TT: stoner stories, Joshua Minton, Short Stories