Lone Rangers

I’ve gone to the movies four times by myself. I’ve gone to a baseball game once by myself. Yep, I’m that guy. The guy that walks up to a family having fun and sits down next to them for a few hours in silence. They wonder if I have a family. If I’m going to touch their kid’s knee. The time I went to the baseball game by myself was because my dad couldn’t go and at the time I was an avid baseball autograph collector. I had to get every team! That was an important game too. Jon Lester and Hanley Ramirez were there! I got them to sign cards and now they sit in my closet. The times I went to the movies were much less excusable. Once it was because I didn’t feel like being at work. I saw The Mummy 3 that day. Another was because I had a gift card and no friends. A girl with a pig nose sat in front of me. I saw Hamlet 2 that day. Yet another time was when I saw Slumdog Millionaire. I had heard it was good and was the only one in the theater. My final independent movie theater viewing was when I saw Watchmen. This was on April Fool’s Day and I called up a girl I knew and asked if she wanted to go to the movies with me. I never heard back from her. Longest April Fool’s Day joke ever.

There are some places that I would never go to alone. Let’s list them. Everybody likes lists. They tend to read things when there are lists. You probably skimmed over my introduction in fact and went straight to the list. You prick.

1) Restaurants

Never go to a restaurant alone. That’s creepy. If it’s fast food that’s fine. Diners are fine too. I went to a diner once by myself. It was at 5 in the morning after sleeping in my car for 2 hours. This was my idea of “saving time” when really sleeping under a towel in my backseat hurt my neck. Whenever I’m at a restaurant and I see someone eating by themselves and their necks don’t seem to be hurting them, I feel bad for them. Unless they’re fat. Then we can all assume they just have an addiction.

2) Amusement Parks

Amusement Parks were made for pairs or groups. Why go on a roller coaster if you have no one to barf next to when you’re done? Child without brothers or sisters must hate Amusement Parks. They go on the log flume and wave to their dad as they kneel between the thighs of a stranger. That stranger, a creep who went to the Amusement Park by himself.

3) Parties

If you know almost everyone there, it’s fine. In fact, I would say going to a party as a pair is still a faux pas. When one of you wants to go socialize with someone else, it leaves the other there to stand near a couch talking to the stoner kid present. Nobody likes the guy that shows up to a party by himself. It screams “Hey I have nobody that wants to come visit me.” It also doesn’t look very good when you can’t even convince any of your buddies to come along. But that’s okay. You can pretend that they’re at an even cooler party and that’s why you’re so late. Everyone’s got to believe that, right?

4) Any Tourist Attraction

Whether it be a shitty boat ride, an elevator trip up somewhere high, or looking at towels used by our forefathers in a rusted building, tourist attractions are made for groups. Whenever there is a guy or girl in a tourist group by themselves, they always ask lots of questions. They try to be smarmy and cute. It’s not cute. It’s annoying. Those loners on the tours act as if they already know everything. All they really know is how to push those who love them away.

5) The Beach

Unless you live really close, I’m talking 10 minutes away, being a creep alone at the beach is a no-no. I don’t care if you’re there to “get a tan” or to “scope out the babes”, it’s still weird. The beach should be a place to do nothing with other people. To watch naked children get sound hosed off of themselves. Most activities at the beach are ones that you can’t do alone either. Have you ever tried one-man volleyball? It’s tough and involved a lot of ducking. I went to the beach once by myself and it was very boring. And windy. My hat blew off and I had to chase it down. If I had someone there with me they could have helped me. But I was a dummy and didn’t invite anybody. Now my hat has flip flop gum on it. It’s okay though, the hat was stolen.