The other night, while at the Bar That Shall Not Be Named with the wife, we had the following exchange. See if you can tell where it all went wrong!

I was asking the wife about work--day care--and led off with an innocuous gambit: "So, how were the little douchebags today?"

She assured me that they were no more monstrous than usual, and related a few short anecdotes. One involved a child who enjoys sandwiches more than anything in the world, and when eating one, further enjoys occasionally hoisting it into the air like a victory flag. Another child evidently derives glee from launching himself off the top of staircases; another is only content when gnawing on a particular endtable in the room. In other words, nothing new: we are ruining our children and turning them into the next generation of psychopaths, depressives and otherwise damaged revenants.

I already like them better than the Boomers.

Then talk turned to her staff. I always like hearing about them, for it seems that the only people more fucked up than our society's children are the ridiculously underpaid wraiths that we barely pay to take care of them. Plus, I am acquainted with many of them, so I always get a little frisson of self-satisfaction in hearing of their varied plights. It's like watching "COPS," only every time someone gets punched in the neck, you get to yell something like, "Hey, that's Donny! Ha ha! Right in the neck! Oh, Donny! I never liked you."

Eventually, the conversation turned to Miss X, an employee of the wife whose misadventures are storied and invariably hilarious, usually due to her curious worldview-slash-psyche--which may be described as one part palsied libertarianism, one part hurtling-through-space brio and perhaps just a splash of pure, distilled run, you fools, run! I'm always pleased to hear of her hijinks, because they usually involve some flavor of unadulterated human pain.

A question suddenly occurred to me. "Does Miss X ever have boyfriends?" I asked.

[NOTE FOR THE STUPID: This is where it all went wrong.]

"Sure," said the wife. She proceeded to tell me about one fellow in particular who endured no less than three or so separate dates where Miss X showed up forty-five minutes late each time because she was spending time filing her teeth or ironing her ears or some such. She was apparently quite surprised when he stopped showing up for their dates, and promptly would call to berate him. From what we know, he has since moved to Tobago and has filters on all incoming media to block anything that contains the alpha string "ayn rand."

Well, I just had to laugh.

"Oh, sure," said the wife, giving me a little elbow jab to the ribs. "You think she's cute."

All my blood ran into my ass and my breathing became shallow; I gawped like a flounder and farted nervously through my suddenly engorged cheeks. Never has a trap been so casually sprung; never has one been so ineptly responded to. "What!" I cried. "Why I! What!" I dived for my Manhattan like a raptor spying a fish. The wife stared bemusedly at me as I tried to calm myself.

Now, the thing is, Miss X is indeed cute. Anyone would say so. I attempted to explain this.

"Sure, I guess," I said, adopting a speculative tone, as if I were discussing landfill conditions in Omaha. "But she's not the kind of girl I'd go for." (This is true! I know: it doesn't matter. I'm a fool.) I mentally dusted off my hands here in a satisfied "case closed!" way.

"That's good," said the wife acidly. "Since you're MARRIED!"

And there I sat, pinioned, and I had brought all the cutting instruments myself and handed them over with an eager smile. The wife seemed to be enjoying this with a grimness that you'd normally expect to find in some children's story that involves someone getting burned alive at the end.

There was only one remedy to this situation, and of course it involved tacos. Happy endings always do, which is why they served tacos at Pol Pot's funeral. The wife was of course having me on a bit, but that didn't mean that I was going to get out of buying some tacos in the bargain.

And this taco place SHALL BE NAMED! For it is magnificent, and everyone should visit this place. It is called Tacos Gringos, and it is a tiny little place on Olive Ave. E. in Seattle, and if you live in Seattle, you're a fool for not going there. If you don't live in Seattle, you should fly here to eat their tacos. Moreover, you should commit a felony here and then flee the state so you can get extradited back to Seattle on the state's dime to eat some more of these fucking tacos.

There is nowhere to sit in Tacos Gringos. In fact, there's no tables either. There's barely room to stand. And they're only open Tuesday-Saturday from 8:00 PM to 3:00 AM, which might tell you what sort of crowd they're after: drunks! Everyone needs tacos, but particularly drunks and idiotic dupes who have been baited by their wives, and Tacos Gringos provides them. They are two dollars apiece, just the right size, and served only with onions and cilantro, with a selection of three hot sauces. That's it. Eat and get out, fuckers!

But you won't get out. Not for long, anyway; you'll just go back. When we were there, I had two shredded pork tacos. Then two more, followed by one last taco. Previously, I had eaten their goat tacos--goat!--which tasted like angels had spat in them. I have seen on the menu--but when they were closed, so I could not sample these--chorizo tacos.

From what I understand, the guy who makes these incredible things used to be a chef at Campagne (non-Seattleites: a high-toned schmancy restaurant) and he just got tired of working for other people, which hey: awesome. Go. Just go. Even if you're not a drunk or a desperate dipshit of a husband caught on a rack of wifely sado-humorism. Go because the tacos are good, and who doesn't like tacos? They bring us together. Let us unite, my friends. Let the juices of bonhomie drip down our wrists and soak into the shirtcuffs of our loving souls. Tacos improve our lives and mollify our wives.

Good tacos make good neighbors.