Probably a half dozen times a day, the thought crosses my mind- Boy howdy, I’m glad I’m not that guy. My mind uses terms like “boy howdy”, but they rarely make it to print.

There are many variations of “that guy”, and I have been some of them. Hopefully I learned my lesson when I was “that guy who got too drunk and really blatantly hit on a fat girl and actually said ‘No, it’s cool, I don’t care what you look like’”. I still shudder when I think of that, and I will never do it again. There is also “that guy who talks way too loudly on his cell phone”, and we’ve all been that guy at some point.

There is a certain class of that guy whom I will never be, though. Like that guy who wears really short shorts when he goes jogging and everyone in town gets the speedbag visual against their will. That guy who still wears his hair in a mullet, as if he doesn’t know that there are companies whose business model is built around making fun of that haircut. That guy I saw outside a restaurant the other day who was at once screaming into his cell phone about a golf game AND wearing Oakley blade sunglasses. Come on.

I saw a prime example of who not to be a couple of weeks ago after I helped my friend Cram move into a new apartment. We met at Caramba Café, and as I was getting out of my car, this red corvette swerved in front of me and parked. His license plate said “xpensiv”.

I’m not making this up. Xpensiv. First of all, a new Corvette will set you back about $55,000, give or take. That’s not cheap, but it’s not like he was driving around in a Ferrari Enzo or something. Even if he had been, that license plate should be burned, cut into pieces, burned again, and buried on the sun.

Since his windows were tinted (part of the xpensiv lifestyle, I assume), I paused for a few seconds and tried to guess what he would look like. My guess was mid-forties, balding, lots of gold chains and ear hair, always smelling like bourbon, 22 year-old girlfriend who is dumb enough to think that a car is a mark of success.

I was wrong. He was a nun with a trunk full of canned goods for the orphanage. See what happens when we prejudge? We go to hell.

Just kidding. He was horrible, but not mid-life crisis horrible. Really skinny white dude in his early thirties, all golf-shirted and khaki shorts, big watch (also xpensiv), and one of those Bluetooth mobile phone earpieces sticking out of his ear.

As I walked past him, he got out of his car and looked around (checking to see which angle the throngs of women were going to attack from), made a big show of checking his watch, and pushed a button on his earpiece like he was James Bond. I couldn’t help it. I laughed, and he heard me.

It’s bad enough when aging former wannabe gangstas forgo any hopes of retiring by putting 40” rims on their escort, but this one was just nauseating. What if he did have lots of money, you ask? In my experience, people who are really smart don’t go around talking about how smart they are. Shaq doesn’t wear a shirt that says “I’m really tall”, and wealthy people generally don’t wear suits made of $100 bills. I’m sure A rapper has one somewhere, but he’ll be broke in a few years. The true you will always

show through any façade you try to erect in its place. That is why everyone knows I am a small, small man without my having to spell it out.

In short, the guy was trying too hard. As my friends arrived, I told them about him and pointed him out. We laughed and pointed discreetly like the polite people we are, and he kept giving me his version of “the stare” to let me know that he knew we were talking about him. The stare was meant to say, “Dude, I know you’re hatin’ the xpense, but keep it up and see what happens”. He said it by raising his eyebrows, looking over some imaginary sunglasses that he wasn’t wearing and looking at us with that ridiculous earpiece mike in his ear. Those are fine while you are driving, but when you go into a restaurant and start chatting up the waitress while still wearing it like an accessory, you have sort of a “Garth Brooks meets Star Trek meets dirty uncle with too many hair products” thing going on.

We sat down and had dinner, and about an hour later, we left, walking right past MC Xpens, who was still rockin’ the earpiece. Josh said “Man, those margaitas were X-PENSIVE.” Then we went outside and laughed at his license plate while he watched from the bar.

I don’t enjoy making fun of people for being handicapped or ugly or anything. It could be argued that I fall into both of those categories myself. I do, however, enjoy the hell out of making fun of people who need a good making fun of. Perhaps the next time he checks himself out in the mirror, he’ll do so with a more discriminating eye. Or maybe he’ll read this and kill me. We’ll see.

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