_{Africa and Tusker Lager. Very authentic.}

So there I was. Resting my aching feet after a full day of slogging around Animal Kingdom at Disneyworld. Leaning my butt against a lumpy rock that may or may not have been natural. (Pro-tip: pretty much everything is artificial at Disneyworld. It’s part of the...um...magic).

Anyway, as I felt the rock digging into my anus with all the delicacy of Captain Hook giving his first rectal exam, I was simultaneously dying of thirst.

My wallet squeaked in fear. It had already coughed up its monetary guts for my lunch. Not that I ate guts for lunch, mind you; I traded that pile of guts for a pretty decent roast beef and slaw and potato hash salad bowl thing at the...canteen. The Satu'li Canteen. Which I’m pretty sure is Pandora-language for ‘I don’t know what the hell I’m eating but I’m sure it’s expensive.’

So, I ate it. All of it, since every abandoned drop of sauce or forgotten fragment of potato is like leaving a dollar behind. Although I had ponied up for the spendy meal, I couldn’t bring myself to buy a spendy beverage to keep it company. As I licked a hole through the bowl, my tongue now chafed like my sweaty crotch had been doing all day. My water bottle was already empty, since my wife drinks water like...a water buffalo.

I really wanted a beer.

But I was a man, and could curb my urges. Hell, I've been married for a while now, and have been forced to curb my urges for years.

Shaded by fake Pandora alien plants and leaning against this lumpy rock now, as it got ever closer to invading parts of me that even my doctor has never seen, we watched the passers-by and I tried to distract myself from my dry-as-a-Sarlacc tongue.

People-watching at Disney should be a ride all its own. It’s way better than sightseeing at Walmart, or the streets of a large city or some tourist trap. The Disney patrons are fierce and varied. I could sit and watch them all day, trying to guess what country they were from or how much they were enjoying standing in line or how much fun their sleeping kids were having in their strollers as their red-faced parents pushed them around in expensive strollers.

But I was still a thirsty man, and I wanted a beer. All the screaming kids and stressed-out parents in the world couldn't distract me from that. Although I could curb my manly urges...I chose not to. This time.

Since our wanderings had brought us to Africa (a region in Animal Kingdom, that is; I walk pretty fast but I hadn’t changed continents) Might as well try to blend in with the locals, so I got a bottle of Tusker Lager. Which is supposedly an African beer. More likely it's made by trained baboons harvesting the sweat and tears from visitors and bottling it up with a little Disney magic.

My wallet gave up a dying scream, and also ten bucks.

Ten bucks buys you a bottle of beer (assuming you’re kind enough to leave a dollar tip for the nice lady behind the bar who never speaks to you or looks at you or even smiles). I’m nothing if not nice. And in the end, I was also out ten bucks.

As I sipped my expensive cheap lager from my even cheaper plastic cup and watched the visitors to Africa struggle by under the hot sun, I wondered why I hadn’t just smuggled in some good beer in my water bottles.

Three manly sips, and my plastic cup was empty. I sighed.

Maybe next time.

_{In lieu of good beer, maybe @aksounder or @carn would like to assemble something for Comedy Open Mic Round 15 as well.}

_{Photo by @negativer}

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