A jolly drunk provided a bit of a distraction last night in the Sacred Heart ER waiting room.

He was inappropriately loud, smelled like the men's room in a dive bar and had a glazed out-of-it look.

In a word, the twentysomething guy was 'faced.

He had come in with some sort of a problem with one of his hands. "But you can't see it," he helpfully explained to a member of the ER's intake staff.

He chuckled during the end of some TV drama about a serial killer. He whooped about something else. And the 11 o'clock news, which led with a story about someone getting shot downtown Sunday morning, really cracked him up.

"Do you have an ash tray?" he asked one of the staffers.

He was told there is extremely no smoking on hospital grounds.

Sor-ree, he said.

I don't know if his hand problem was ever diagnosed. But I suspect he stopped laughing sometime this morning.

       

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