HOME ALONE (WITH ONLY ICED TEA AND NO CULKINS)

Last weekend my wife headed out of town to see family and I had the whole house to myself. It was time for Bachelor Boy Dan to crawl out of his underground hibernation like a crazed cicada and party like its 1999 (meaning the year before I met my wife, not the “sky was all purple – lion in my pocket” end of the world allusions of the Prince song).  Woohooo Party-up!  Dan alone time. Yee and/or haw.

I used to feel guilty that I looked forward to having a few days on my own, until years ago when my wife confessed, she also felt the same way before I went anywhere. That of course made sense to me, but originally did nothing to absolve my guilt.  But over time I’ve come to realize that it’s likely a good ‘healthy for the relationship’ thing to occasionally give each other some space. And it’s okay to look forward to it… just not too much.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, whichever way you want to look at it), we are both mushy saps that prefer to be together than apart. So after all our anticipation, activity planning, and ‘Me Time’ bravado beforehand, usually around 24 hours after the other leaves, a stenchy whiff of co-dependency blows through the house with the same unavoidable acrid pungency of a forgotten grocery bag escaping red onion that spent 2 weeks in the trunk of a car parked in the Death Valley Mojave Desert.

Yeah, I’m not sure what it says about me, but it only seems to take one single self-indulgent bachelor day of guilty pleasure TV, selfishly eating bad meals without consulting what anyone else wants, leaving the bathroom door wide open with reckless abandon, and loudly releasing any built-up bodily gases without an ‘excuse me’ in sight, to flush any needed alone time out of my system. By the second day, I am quickly reminded how much better life is in our happy humdrum normal routines together. Then I inevitably spend the rest of my ‘alone time’ out of sorts until my wife gets back home. Luckily, based on the timing of the texts I receive whenever I am the one away on a trip, my wife’s timeline is about the same.

So that was basically my state of mind the second night my wife was away at 2:30am when I could not sleep and found myself flopped on the sofa loudly streaming and casting all sorts of crap onto the living room TV. Earlier that day, I had already watched the couple of music documentaries I had been saving for the weekend (my wife hates those), caught the second half of Goodfellas (it’s one of those movies if I click onto it, I have to stop and watch the rest), watched two episodes of Perry Mason (surprise, surprise –  he won both cases), and saw the same Sportscenter highlights two or three times (nothing changed – the Yankees lost each time). After dozing off at some point for over an hour, I was now a lot awake, a little lonely, and quickly heading directly down a scary dark alley of the entertainment kingdom.

Now I might occasionally suffer from slight delusions of grandeur but in my heart of hearts, I don’t expect every moment of my life to be dedicated to something useful or important.  Yet I can’t help thinking that if I suddenly was my deathbed, I would certainly deeply regret wasting precious hours of my existence watching the crap I did that late night. First, I viewed a cringy early 1970s episode of Match Game hoping they would let guest Nipsey Russel recite one of his patented bad poems (they did). Then I watched the old cop show TJ Hooker. I turned that one into a game of sorts, first to see if William Shatner’s poofy toupee would shift during any of his chase scenes and also to see how long it would take and what excuse they would use, to get junior Police Cadets Adrian Zmed and Heather Locklier into skimpy clothes or bathing suits (14 minutes – longer than usual, and it was to blend in on a stake-out near the beach, so of course it all made perfect sense).

I always feel self-conscious if my eyes tear-up while watching something on TV, so next I made use of my weary melancholy mood and having no witnesses, by watching stuff that embarrassingly pushes my automatic weep buttons like the first ten minutes of UP, the last 10 minutes of the MASH finale, that scene in Yesterdays where the Indian singer meets a very alive 78-year-old John Lennon, or that part of the Dr. Who episode where he takes Van Goah to the museum to see how revered he became after his death.

But if that was not bad enough, my next few clicks down the YouTube vortex rabbit hole took me to an episode of the ‘can’t look away – wreck on the highway’ cheesy old sit-com Alice. Guest star Desi Arnez was playing a philandering fashion photographer named Paco who, just like Ricky Recardo, tended to humorously mispronounce English words in his exaggerated Cuban accent. After that horrid mess, I tried to balance out my brain drain by watching part of the modern art documentary The Shock of The New, but as the clock started creeping closer to 4am, I needed something more mindless. I finally settled on rewatching a 1980s Letterman routine with Larry Bud Melman in the scummy 42nd street bus terminal giving out warm towels as he welcomed haggard riders to New York City. Thankfully I dozed off again soon after that and eventually crawled into bed before sunrise.

When I had first sat down on the sofa hours and hours earlier, it was not my intention to view any of that stuff. It all started out with me scouring the internet looking for the old Saturday Night Live skit about a mall store that only sold scotch tape. It was not one of those frequently quoted famous routines, but for decades I have been referencing it whenever I predicted the inevitable quick demise of any ridiculously limited-appeal new specialty store or restaurant that opened. 

Though I had not seen the sketch in years, I still clearly remembered the satirical humor in the oblivious misguided store owner who invested his life savings into this ridiculous concept business model.  He and the staff repeatedly send any of their few potential customers away, because they asked for things like ‘recording tape’ and he only sold the “sticky clear cellophane tape”. I had recently brought it up in conversation with my wife again, and that’s when I got it in my head that I should find a copy of it. 

You see, a free-standing store called ‘H Tea-0’ opened up a few years ago in the parking lot of a nearby strip mall. All they sell is iced tea. Nothing else. No coffee, no soda, no snacks, no food… just Iced Tea by the glass or jug.  When it first opened, I immediately thought of the Scotch Tape Store. “What a ridiculous concept” I said to my wife, “surely this won’t make it.”

I assume they were thinking, coffee shops make money selling 20¢ of coffee for $4 a pop, why not an Iced Tea shop. But all those coffee shops that are already on every other corner, all sell iced tea too, along with a ton of other beverages and food. I could not imagine how a small business that literally only sells Iced Tea could survive? Even if it were amazing tea.

I mean, literally just on the other side of its drive-thru lane, there is a 7-11 that has a giant wall cooler filled with over a dozen different varieties of Iced Tea from cheapie dollar tall cans of Arizonia to Lipton to Nestea Brisk to snooty $3.99 mini bottles of Pure Leaf specialty brew and that is not including the multiple variations at the soda fountain area. Plus, they have chips, gas, lottery tickets and a ton of other things. Every fast-food place and grocery store sells perfectly good iced tea. Not to mention I can personally make a vat of delicious, iced tea at home by simply throwing three cheapie tea bags into a pitcher of water and doing nothing else but leaving it on the counter.  The only beverage I can make at home that is cheaper and easier than iced tea, is a glass of plain tap water.

Well, I guess there is a reason why I never made a zillion bucks on some wacky innovative investment, because seemingly I do not have the insight into what the next big (or even average sized) thing is. The Iced Tea joint has now been there for several years, even surviving the pandemic. A quick click on their website shows they now have a ton of recently opened locations all over the south. And while I have not seen a slew of copycat Iced Tea huts, joints, bars, or boutiques open up, that original one near my house is obviously doing well enough to survive.

Look, just earlier I admitted to crying at wussy TV stuff and watching part of an Alice rerun, so I’m definitely not afraid to embarrass myself. I’m man enough to admit when I’m wrong. So the other day when my wife and I were out running errands in preparation for her trip and we happened to drive by the Iced Tea Shop, I flat out admitted I erred when I originally said the place was as doomed as the Scotch Tape Store.

That day happened to be our 26th day of hellish over 100-degree weather, without any rain in sight. Even during the night, it had been staying in the mid-80s. When we stepped outside into the oppressive heat to put gas in the car and scrub clean the windows, it felt like we were taking tap dancing lessons on the surface of the sun. We both got immediately hot and thirsty. After we left the service station, I noticed my wife was not taking her usual route home. She said’ if the car’s thermometer still read over 105 when we passed the Iced Tea place, she was going to take it as a sign that we should finally try it. 

It read 108 when we pulled into the long drive-thru line that wrapped around the small building.  I was truly amazed how busy it was. While patiently waiting our turn, we kidded around about what we should order; either iced tea or iced tea or iced tea (ITS ALL THEY SELL!!!!). Chatting there is when I realized that while my wife understood the ridiculousness of the concept of a Scotch Tape Store, she had in fact never seen the actual SNL skit. She had just heard me repeatedly ramble on about it whenever I saw a new business that I thought would fail.

The irony of spending half my mind-clearing therapeutic Bachelor Man Dan alone time searching the web for a copy of an old comedy bit to show my wife, was not lost on me. I never did find the skit that night, but the next day I tracked down an upload of the entire episode. Of course, I got suckered in and watched the whole thing. I think I long ago proved I don’t make very good use of my time when I am alone.

I started thinking about back to when I really was a bachelor. Sure, I had some crazy wild times and have a catalog of old stories that if I had grandkids, I’d get in trouble for telling them. But the truth is, far more of my bachelor weekends were pretty similar to this past semi-pathetic lazy slug-like one. I think the best thing about my occasional Dan alone time, is I am always reminded how much better things are with my wife than without.

Its 108 out and my wife is speeding

CLICK TO SEE SNL EPISODE  SCOTCH TAPE STORE BIT AT 54 MINUTE MARK

Scotch tape store bit at the 54 minute mark.