My name is Courtney.
If you get on I-35 in Minneapolis and drive south for four hours, you will be in Des Moines, Iowa. I know, awesome, right? I guess it could be worse, if you drove west for four hours you’d be in Fargo, North Dakota, and then what? Hang out at a bowling alley and talk about shooting various nouns for sport? Probably. I myself have been to Fargo on two separate occasions. Those trips were the third and fourth dumbest things I’ve ever done.
Personally, I’ve never spent any time in the city of Des Moines. My only trip there was on a 5 hour layover to Las Vegas. Glossing over the logistics of how I ended up flying from Minneapolis to Des Moines, and then to Vegas, let me just say my time at the Des Moines International Airport was actually mildly pleasant.
There was a bar that served two kinds of beer; Budweiser, and a “lady beer for the ladies” (direct quote from the bartender) called Bud Light. Knowing full well that there was no way I was going to survive 5 hours in this airport sober, I elected to spend my time in the bar drinking all of the lady beer I could. I’m fancy like that. Two hours in, after I had had maybe 4 beers and 2 sticks of beef jerky (no seriously, I know this sounds like I’m just making fun of Iowa, but I’m not…yes I am) a man came in and sat down uncomfortably close to me. There were 10 seats at the bar, which means there were 7 other places to sit that wouldn’t be right next to me and this guy plops down right next to me. Terrific. He immediately launched into conversation. His name was Dale or David (let’s just call him Dalvid), he sold some sort of insurance, he was married and had some kids, including a newly acquired soft-skulled germ sack, he wondered if I had enough insurance, he bought me beer and more beef jerky, and he told me he was going to Vegas to see his girlfriend who was a stripper at the Spearmint Rhino. That was the only part of the conversation I had actually heard up to this point. I think her stage name was Marmalade. Or Marmaduke, whatever.
I spoke my first words in what had been a 20 minute long one sided conversation, “So, are your wife and kids going to meet you and her at the strip club?” Dalvid laughed and said, “No, my wife thinks I am going to a convention in Vegas. I promised her I’d be home for church on Sunday.” What do you even say to something like that? Well, I told him he was a dick, and he responded by yelling at me and threatening to kick my ass. Things escalated quickly. As you can probably guess, starting a fight in an airport is a bad idea, and the airport police came and took him away. It was awesome. I didn’t see Dalvid boarding our flight to Vegas, so I’m guessing his wife had to come down to the airport and bail him out of airport jail, which is even more awesome.
What is the point of this whole story you ask? Well, I guess all I’m saying is I think that this “Des Moines: Hell Yes” shirt is funny and I might buy one.
