Do You Yahoo?

It was back in the 80s after my brother’s ordeal in Hamstead, NB, I can’t remember what year. The weather was crap all over central Europe and I had some vacation pending. I told my brother, let’s go to Utrecht and not some tourist trap like Amsterdam. They have great food and bookstores, so we went. When the rain got too much, and we had worn out all the comics in the city coffee shops, we spent the last day in a nearby bar. The bartender was quite the character and asked us where we hailed from. He was trying to get away from a couple of American guys at the end of the bar talking absolute shite. We explained him our quasi-nationality and all the places we’d been. We got into the subject of weird dialects, like being able to understand Luxembourgois if you know German, French and Flemish. At some point I mentioned Cyrillic and learning Russian from my father, when suddenly all eyes were upon me from that end of the bar. They slowly inched up with a barrage of cajolery; suggestive nonsense like “Oh, do you work for the Company? You know, Air America...”

Needless to say, I looked at them gobsmacked à la WTF? Then told them in no uncertain terms to fuck off and die, that they must have worn out their Tom Clancy novels aside from being quite a few blocks short of a Lego set. We carried on conversing with the Bartender to no avail. These whizbangs were bound and determined in their foregone conclusions, but I was not going to give them the privilege of even knowing where I live. They said they were stationed in Heidelberg, “so where are you stationed?” they asked. “Fuck off, I’m not stationed anywhere and I’m certainly not telling you where I live.” “Oh god”, I told my brother under my breath, “these yahoos are definitely 7th Armour Division.” “Is that something to beware of?” asked the Bartender. I answered with the classical European hand sign for “brainwashed numpties”. He nodded, “yeah I figured so”. Well, this nonsense kept up until one of them kept pulling at my sleeve, insisting that I show him my ID. “Piss off, I’m not showing you anything. This isn’t some kind of FKK. The bartender laughed. “Awww come on” they persisted. I finally turned, glaring the blighter in eye as a sardonic grin spread across my mug. “So you want to see my fucking I-card, I’ll show you my fucking I-card...but after I show you my fucking I-card, I’m gonna have to fucking shoot you...” I seethed, reaching inside my jacket. I thought their eyes were going to explode as they threw their money on the bar and left in a flash. The bartender looked around in amazement, then laughed “shit, I’ve been trying to get rid of those guys all day!” Well, as fate would have it, all drinks were on the house after that.