We dropped off my brother in downtown Norfolk tonight to see a concert and he had several suggestions for where we should get dinner. We settled on Hell's Kitchen since Perry said it was a casual atmosphere and we were far from dressed up even for a Sunday evening. Dinner was excellent - Rich had a grilled burrito and I had a crab cake sandwich. I ate a bit too much, though, and my belly is trying to tell me so.
When we stopped at my brother's to pick him up, Rich waited in the car while I went into the house. Next to the TV was a large stuffed monkey. I immediately picked it up and Perry said, "Do you like him? I won him for you at Busch Gardens." This confused me since he had gone to Busch Gardens with his girlfriend and I would have assumed if he won anyone a monkey it would have been her. "There's kind of a story behind it, though," he added.
They were at the games area of the park and wandering around when they happened upon an Asian girl who didn't speak the best English. She wanted to play some squirt gun game that needed three people so Perry and Christine agreed to join in. She paid for the game for all three of them and they proceeded to shoot their water guns at the targets. The bell went off and Perry threw up his arms in celebration! Hooray, go team, we're doing a great job! They played a second game and the bell went off again. Perry exclaimed some shout of victory as though their motley group was kicking this game's ass.
The Asian girl grew tired of the game after they had won those two prizes. Perry offered that since they had only won two stuffed monkeys but there were three of them that Christine could have one and she could have one. She looked at him puzzled and said no thanks and they could have both monkeys. Perry and Christine walked off with the two monkeys and Christine proceeded to slowly explain that the game they all just played wasn't a team effort, but was in fact a competition between the three of them in which Christine had won the first time and the Asian girl had won the second time. For all his enthusiasm, Perry was the only loser in the entire process.
"So I guess I technically didn't win the monkey for you, but Christine has the other one and nobody would have won any monkeys had I not been there. So I feel like I had a hand in it." He shrugged and started gathering his things. I smiled and walked back to the front door clutching my monkey. Rich looked very confused from the driver's seat when he sent me inside for my brother and I came back with a monkey instead.
