Meet The Bloody Mary Elf
I have recently written about my encounters with innocent children at the finest Santa breakfast in the land, thumb a meal that helped remind me that Christmas is all about kids. Today I would like to slightly amend that statement because the holidays are also a particularly special time when adults are filled with the spirit.
Take the spirit vodka for instance. You can’t make a good Bloody without it.
During my visit to the breakfast to end all Santalands at the Pfister this past weekend, sovaldi sale I witnessed a delightful phenomenon occur involving the parents and guardians of many of the exuberant tikes who had come to give Santa the straight dope on their wants and needs. In the midst of the scrambled egg and pastry feeding frenzy, I noticed a solo middle aged man saunter through the crowds to his family’s breakfast table carrying precious cargo in his hands. He was not balancing a buffet plate with sausage links stacked like cord wood as you might expect of that sort of a dad type. Instead he had hunted down his own Yuletide treat – a towering Bloody Mary.
As the smartest adult in the room settled in to crunch on a celery stick slick with spicy, boozy tomato juice, the eyes of others in the room whose height is measured in feet rather than inches looked dreamily at his better alternative to grapefruit juice. Then slowly, one by one, many of the elders in the room started to disappear and then reappear minutes later with their own fully stuffed Bloody Marys. Soon the ratio of hot chocolate to vodka-based drinks in the room was balanced and both kids and adults had their own distinct reasons to call this “the most wonderful time of the year.”
Watching this silent Bloody Mary train chug along, I thought of the busy bar staff in the Lobby Lounge who I imagined were mixing and fixing these elaborate cocktails as fast as you can say “a little moderate day drinking will always jingle my bells.” It certainly was a tall order for a Saturday morning, what with the secret hotsy totsy mix needing plenty of celery, pickle and other delish garnish.
A short time after leaving Breakfast with Santa, I found myself down in the Lobby Lounge. Val was indeed busy behind the bar mixing Bloody Marys and pouring short beer backs. Two folks in red running gear had a place at the bar and were enjoying some refreshing Mimosas. The female of the pair noticed a woman across the lobby, and shouted to her.
“Did you make it upstairs in one piece with the Bloody Mary?”
The woman gave a thumbs up and waved a show of thanks. And then it hit me. A Bloody Mary train needs its own conductor, and this lady in the red tracksuit was it.
I introduced myself, shook her hand and explained the phenomenon of the sudden appearance of happy adults holding classic brunch drinks at Breakfast with Santa. I asked her if she had had something to do with that drink dance. The lady admitted that she had given a hand with the stacking of garnish and had offered an assist to the woman she had just checked in with as she had teetered across the lobby with a full drink.
Now here’s the part of the story that I would very much like you to believe is magic. When I talk to folks at the Pfister, I ask permission to tell about our encounter, and I always, without fail, write down their names in a small notebook I keep tucked in the breast pocket of my suit jacket. When I went back to that notebook to get the woman’s name so I could insert it in this story and give some attribution to this good soul who had shown herself to be a true believer in enabling a little light morning buzz, the page that had contained her name was missing from my notebook.
You might think that I lost the page after having a few pre-noon nips myself, but the only sauce that goes in my gullet is black, steamy, and java jiving all the way. I call “Christmas Miracle!” on this one (allowing of course for the possibility that maybe, just maybe, that page had been ripped from my notebook and wrapped around a piece of chewed gum that had lost its flavor).
The lady in question and her male companion had come from a morning fun run downtown and were relaxing with their champagne cocktails in true holiday decompression mode. I would like to give credit where credit is due, but I’ll simply accept the magical Christmas moment and crown this service-oriented woman as The Bloody Mary Elf. And believe me, Elf on the Shelf ain’t got anything on this sister.
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