Big Buck(s)

This afternoon my husband finally got word that he will be starting his tenure track position this summer. We've been waiting for this for a long time, through many happy years spent in Davis, LA, Paris, Mainz, and here at home. So yay him and all that. So we went to celebrate at lunch. Where to go? We live in the suburbs. Not exactly a haven of romantic, thrilling, eclectic or even tasty food. Nothing one might call "ethnic," unless you count the chili fries at the neighborhood diner, which are, of course, redolent of old Meheeco.

We wound up at the local pub--yes, the pub, us, a respectable professor and his very slightly eccentric wife--smoky, grubby, hoserly, wonderful. Immediately beside us was a large video game console, "Buck Hunter." Apparently, you pay $4 Canadian and then pick up an orange plastic gun and blast away at gentle video deer grazing in misty video meadows to your h(e)art's delight. Tasty as the lager fries were, we couldn't take our eyes off it. Some person calling himself "Bojangles Clegg" took spots 1-6 on the all time sharp shooters list. Perhaps he was there in the pub at the same time we were? I cast about, surreptitiously, for this person: is it the orange-haired senior citizen playing video lottery with her mouth hanging open? The be-booted cocktail waitress? One of the four middle-aged men wearing flannel shirts, tractor caps, and oil-spattered jeans, smoking Export A's and drinking Bud from the bottle? Who is Bojangles Clegg? I feel certain this question will plague me for weeks to come. Everyone I look at will be judged against this standard: Could (s)he be Bojangles Clegg?

Bojangles Clegg, if you're out there, won't you please make yourself known to me? A fragment of antler would do.