How Did It Go?

The short answer is that if I have enough vodka, I can do anything. Including singing badly in front of a friendly crowd. No stage fright, so now I'm invincible. Look out.

Perhaps the funniest moment was early in the set, when the emcee (a fellow expat) invited me and J to the mic to join in on what I was sure was Brown Sugar. . . NO! Worse! After googling lyrics, I realize I was expecting Honky Tony Women.

Anyhow, intro complete, we all inhale and open our mouths. I sing, "I met a gin-soaked bar-room queen in Memphis . . ."

The boys sing, "Mustang Sally . . ."

I don't even know the words to Mustang Sally. Well, I can doo-wop, "Ride, Sally, ride!"

Which is what I did.

Quietly.

To myself.

What followed was a barely passable rendition of Dead Flowers and a caterwauling of Back in the USSR. Then lots of dancing, more drinking, good fun, and an early escape to have me home by midnight.

Note to Self: If you're going to jump around like that, you better Kegel more. Got it? Good.

Hungover, but ebullient (in spite of the fact someone beat me with a baseball bat all night, right? I mean I feel like someone beat me with a ball bat . . .), I even took pity of the poor, sickly Spouse (he now has the same bug Skittles had . . . and she now coughs like a barking seal, but has returned to school), and escorted the children to school in his stead. On the Metro, having dropped the girls off at school, I made a Metro Matron smile!

What I call the "Metro Matrons" are the very Soviet style women who sit in little control booths at the bottom of the escalators. Apparently they can bark orders at you through the PA system, although I have never seen that. But I never tried to eat a piece of pie on a Metro escalator like a less fortunate friend told me he once did. His pie eating resulted in a stern dressing down.

The Metro Matrons are fierce and humorless and very, very serious about their jobs. It has long been my goal to make one of them smile. But rarely am I even able to catch their eyes.

Anyhow, this morning I was approaching the bottom of the escalator when I caught sight of the woman working this particular booth. She was very matronly, broad and buxom, sporting the best big, white, bouffant hairdo this side of Dollywood. In her severe Metro uniform. The whole look just cracked me up, and I smiled.

She caught my eye and smiled back at me! It was a lovely little moment.

I can now leave Moscow.