By Vicki Brown
It was my birthday. Big hairy deal.
At my age, birthdays just don’t rock like they used to.
When I was a kid, I would get so excited about my approaching birthday. It is one month after Christmas. My grandparents would send a card with money, friends gave me gifts and mom would make me a cake. It was grand.
Now? Not so much. It would be just like any other day, except my husband refuses to let it just quietly go away.
In our family, we made a big deal out of birthdays because I wanted my children to know that we are grateful they were born. I kind of thought that the tradition would just disappear once the kids were grown and out of the house. But my poor husband, who has suffered empty nest syndrome for 15 years, wouldn’t let it go.
So when he asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I said a trip to Myrtle Beach to visit a Piano Bar. It was the only thing I could think of, and truthfully, I love piano bars. Where else can you go, eat snacks, and sit and listen to amazing pianists play a plethora of musical genres. (That’s a fancy way of saying they play any kind of music requested). My absolute favorite is a dueling piano bar where two pianists compete to see if they can play any request given by the audience.
My husband agreed to take me, so we got a hotel overlooking the ocean and prepared to enjoy a night of fun music. But it didn’t go like we planned.
First of all, we were visiting on a Sunday through Wednesday. We sadly discovered that the piano bar was open on Thursday through Saturday. Really? Am I to believe that people only want to enjoy piano music on the weekends? What is the problem? Do the pianos only work on Fridays through Saturdays? I was pretty irritated but decided that we could find something else to do that was equally entertaining. Myrtle Beach has shows and music venues so we would just change plans. Right?
WRONG.
Let me clue you in on an important fact. Evidently, Myrtle Beach closes in January. Seriously, everything pretty much closes down with the exception of a few restaurants. Unbelievable.
So we ate…a lot. We walked…a lot. We watched the ocean…a lot. I confess, the ocean was beautiful, in spite of the two rainy days, and the food was fabulous, until our last night.
We drove into North Myrtle Beach to find a restaurant that was new to us. We like to try different restaurants and hoped to find a good one. But we should have known…they were all closed. And by this time, I was hungry and cranky.
I saw an open restaurant and told my husband to just pull into a parking lot and let’s eat whatever they had. He did so, and as we were walking in the door, he suddenly looked at me and said, “Um, this restaurant is a little different.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, they yell at you, act snarky, and call you names.”
He had to be kidding me. People actually paid for that? Evidently.
After we were seated, our stinker of a waiter made a nasty comment about me ordering water, so being hungry, I snapped back. I know it’s all part of the gimmick, but I think I scared him. That’s when he asked if we wanted just “normal” service. I said yes.
He disappeared after that and I ate the worst Caesar salad I have ever had, but I did enjoy watching the servers make fun of all the customers. It’s not my thing, but it was entertaining.
The moral to this story? Don’t go to Myrtle Beach in January. IT’S CLOSED!
