Pretentious Scarves

Nichole and I had meant to sign up for a cooking class. Not too unfortunately, it ended up being more of a meal presented to us rather than a hands-on sort of thing.

That's right, no cooking in this cooking class. And in retrospect, probably not too much class, either.

I blame it on a few articles of clothing. Specifically, a couple of pretentious scarves.

See, we were at a fancy table with some other attendees, but unlike us, this was not their first rodeo. They knew all about wine and wine pairings and were not afraid to talk about it.

Now the 2 ladies next to me were actually pretty fun. I noticed right away that my neighbor at the table had an amazing diamond ring & I expressed my admiration.

"Oh, thanks, I just had it reset," she told me. I snapped a picture as she continued, "It helped make the divorce a little easier."

Ah, okay then, I bet it did. That's one amazing ring. Resetting an engagement ring seems like a healthy way to deal with divorce. We clinked glasses in a bonding female moment, and I did not mention that I only just got married and was quite happy about it.

The couple across from us captured my eye, too. Probably in their late 60s, they were all kinds of yacht perfection in their sweaters and casual confidence in flatware use (Nichole and I were intimidated by the 5 forks at our place settings).

They engaged the wine teacher guy in a little conversation about the complexities of the current glass. Ah, yes, of course they were British. I would not have wanted to hear any other accent come out of those classy mouths.

Then came the Pretentious Scarves. These ladies made Nichole want to throw her wine at them (except that would have been wasteful). They talked about themselves all night as they adjusted and readjusted their gigantic, tribal-looking scarves.

They're the kind of folks you unfortunately encounter a little too often in Austin, and I don't know if I can properly describe it. I'm sure I am one of them sometimes.

But they are a little too proud of Keep Austin Weird and seem to look down on everyone else. If you're not wearing hemp and haven't recently exfoliated with whole grain oatmeal flaxseed organic soap in a hot spring, then you pretty much suck...now excuse me while I pour some apple juice into my Prius as fuel so I can get to the animal shelter where I volunteer reading books to blind pomeranians.

Yes, they've been to Bordeaux--"It's beautiful!"--yes, they love that $20 cheese used in our appetizer and all its fancy packaging--"It's beautiful!"--yes, they are the people that interrupt the wine guy all night to try to say that they too can taste the lemon crusted custard notes in that particular wine.

Yeah, you guessed it, it was beautiful.

I'm telling you about these other Non-Cooking Class people because I think it was my intimidation by, fascination of, irritation with, or just plain distraction by them that prevented me from noticing what I myself was doing. And that was: drinking the wine placed before me. All of it. Every last glass.

Never been to Bordeaux. But we hear it's beautiful.

Of course I tried to pay attention to the flavors, the bouquet or whatever, that each glass offered. How could one not try to taste all the wine notes with Pretentious Scarves boasting about how beautiful their retreat in southern Italy had been last year? Holy cow they reminded me of this scene in LA Story.

Quite funny. So my story here has a twist of lemon to it, too. Because we left our lovely, elegant dinner and ended up at Lala's. A diviest of dive bars, Lala's is made to always look like Christmas inside. It smells kinda bad, the folks there are all a little crusty, and it's within walking distance of my house.

I don't really know how or why we chose to go there. Perhaps it was to balance out the Fancy we'd been inundated with at our dinner. Perhaps we wanted to finish out the lemon crusted custard with a proper glass of cheap wine, served in a tumbler. I think we just wanted to be loud without being stared at.

Nichole had the presence of mind to call her husband, the awesome Clay, and have him come pick her up.

He also kindly dropped me at my house, where I managed to drop my own scarf on the lawn. Nichole delivered it to me at the front door a few minutes later, having seen it out there in the grass. I'd like to think of it as a symbol for the evening--of our leaving the stemware of Central Market's cooking school for the mason jar Bloody Mary's of Lala's.

Stay classy, ladies.