Where Everybody Knows Your Name
Cheers, an American sitcom television series premiered in 1982 and ran for nearly eleven years. The theme from Cheers, "Where Everybody Knows Your Name," is a great saying and song that has stuck with me since the early 80s. After college, I moved to Atlanta from Wisconsin in 1981; needless to say, nobody knew my name. Like many, I had to learn to make friends after leaving my family, sorority sisters, and high school friends in the midwest. Southern folks were extremely welcoming, but I was a Northerner, and it took me a while to make friends with my Northern accent. After 40 plus years in Atlanta, I never picked up the Southern accent, and to this day, I still say "you guys," as do my two daughters, born in Atlanta in the late '90s.
But sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, so I was determined to fit in and make friends, although making friends as an adult isn't easy. Few things in life are more important than close friends. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart." Looking back at the friends that have come and gone in my life, I can appreciate how true that is. Do you remember when you first became friends with a childhood buddy? On my first day in kindergarten, I had separation anxiety with my mom and didn't want her to leave me alone with all these five-year-old strangers. A girl named Barbara took me under her wing, and I was content to start learning my ABCs. Barbara and I went through grade school and high school together.
I have come a long way from those early days and have not lost my desire to meet new friends. Oddly enough, I realized a truism about myself, and this trait remains with me today. That trait, which is undeniably true, is that I'm not particularly eager to cook. I don't cook well, and therefore I do not cook often. My solution for this flaw, which I consider a blessing, is finding my nourishment at restaurants, not in my kitchen. The dining establishments I choose most certainly have a bar where I prefer to sit and eat.
At this point, you may be guessing where this is going. When you frequent a restaurant or bar often, you are bound to become friends with those establishments' workers, mostly bartenders, and servers. And, over time, these eateries, perhaps numbering many, are the places you go "where everybody knows your name." Over the years, and it's been quite a few, I have established many places where everybody knows my name, and I have made many wonderful friends as a result.
Of course, besides bartenders, I have made friends with all sorts of people over the years. However, I must say that some of my most treasured friends began with that person on the other side of the bar. For example, one of my favorite bartenders at a great steak house in Greensboro, GA, named Linger Longer, first became a friend, then my realtor after earning her license. And since then, has been on both the buying and selling side of a number of my investments.
Now that I am a children's book author, along with two of my sisters, under the pen name CJ Corki. I post blogs like this every thee weeks on Facebook, not to mention posts on Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram. I am hoping that eventually, everybody will know my name, whether near or far or on either side of the bar—cheers to great friends and all the bartenders worldwide. Does everybody know your name?
