Eurotrip 2022 Chronicles: A Toast to Don Fede
Context: every so often, Exodus employees meet up IRL to vacation and co-work together. Wonderful and memorable things happen. Unfortunately, half of those memories drown at the bottom of a glass. The other 49% disappear into the ether, casualties of bugs in short-term to long-term memory consolidation, exacerbated by certain individuals snoring themselves and everyone around them into an early grave. Sleep apnea is not a joke (yet).
Enough FUD. 1% is plenty. I’ve filled the gaps with poetic license, smoothed over inconsistencies with ambiguity and diluted the result with lies that I’ve since convinced myself are true, using the great science of homeopathy. The Truth is dead, long live The Truth!
Fede’s single. And he’s always on the hunt. Whenever we hang out with him, we always half-tease half-encourage him to talk to girls. One day, Diego, Fede and I were at the bus stop, on our way to the co-working space, and there were two cute girls also waiting for the bus. Or maybe waiting for Fede to talk to them, I’m not a mind reader. They were to either side of us, maybe 10 feet apart. Fede was like a cow between two bales of hay, looking simultaneously blessed and paralyzed by the bounty. By the way, when I told this story to my wife, I said “he was like a cow between two-”, paused, and she said “sandwiches.” If that makes more sense to you, please imagine it that way. Luckily, only one of the sandwiches, sorry, girls, got on the bus, sparing Fede further paralysis.
The girl sat down alone half-way down the bus, facing us. Diego and I immediately started bullying Fede into making a move. Fede humored us and we eventually settled on what he would say. He would tell the girl his full name, and if that didn’t seal the deal, ask her if there was anything good to eat in the area. When she said yes — we were counting on that strong Slovenian national pride — he’d ask if he could take her there for lunch. Bada bing. Swish.
This dastardly plan took 15 minutes to come up with, with 14 minutes well spent on juvenile giggling. We barely beat the buzzer. By the time we broke Fede and he swaggered over to meet his destiny, there were exactly 7 minutes left till our stop. Slovenian bus arrival time prediction technology uses deep learning to…never mind the details, just know that it’s second only to the forecasting software used for Japanese trains, and that’s only because Tokyo is a giant monolithic clock. With the trains attached to its gears, they tautologically run on time.
“She looks very confused,” Diego whispered a few seconds later, looking at them out of the corner of his eye. I was still thinking about his lecture on trains. “Don’t look head on, you’ll spook her.” I tried, but my eyes always tear up when I try to see around corners. I couldn’t tell if she was confused or just blurry. All I could tell was that they were still talking, which felt like a good sign.
Fede came back a solid 5 minutes later. We were impressed as only nerds can be, watching their handsome friend flirting with ease. He didn’t get her to agree to lunch but he did find out where she lived. Not the exact address, or we’d still be there worshipping at his feet, but that she lived in the area near the co-working space.
When we got up to get off the bus, the girl got up too.
“Don’t look at her…man, this is so awkward,” Fede said. But the girl didn’t seem to think we were stalkers, and walked only a few feet behind us as we headed off to work. For a second I worried Fede might have come off as harmless and was deeply offended on his behalf. I almost confronted her about it, but then didn’t, like a normal person.
This moment wouldn’t have been nearly as memorable if The Toastmaster hadn’t bullied us into coming up with heartfelt toasts to each other one night, when fig liqueur and whiskey was running thick through our veins and grappa loosening our lips. (We lost a lot of good ships out there). I was toasting Fede, with this story as the preface, while Alex alternated between joyful cries celebrating how wonderful the toast was going to be and menacing yells about how it better not all be a shaggy dog story, or else.
To Don Fede, may the girls appreciate him as much as we do!
