Come hungry... leave?

“Where are you going,” I said with a slightly raised voice? My friend turned slowly towards me with his familiar albeit confused glare. We’ve known each other long enough for me to immediately recognize the glare as really more of a question: “WTF are you bitchin’ about now?” “Where are we going? Are we on some Sunday drive or something,” I demanded? “Well it’s lunch time. Aren’t you hungry? There’s that place just up the road that we went to before. You liked that didn’t you?” I had no idea where or what he was referring to but, I said, “no” anyway. Why did I say no? I imagine partly because where I went to grad school most questions were first answered with a, “no.” Also, I never enjoy the meals or service in this town so; I thought it generally safe to answer in the negative. In addition, this week I have, “not been in a good place,” as self-help books might term my funk.

“I thought we were going shopping?” “No, I don’t want to shop!” His tone suggested that this wasn’t negotiable. “Well, why the f**k am I in this car? He offered, “Well, if you don’t want to go there to eat, then where?” I don’t know why I suggested this but out came, “let’s go to IHop. I want to go to IHop.” Boy do I have fond memories of IHop from high school. Those memories were culminated with looking up one morning staring into Spud’s disapproving face; his arms crossed and uttering simply, “gentlemen?” (Never mind who Spud was, if you were there you’d remember him) We went to a private high school and senior year had first period as a free period. We used to slip away to the IHop a couple miles away from campus and hold court over stacks of pancakes. This was long before they started putting chocolate chips and other weird stuff in the cakes. What made them great then were their fluffiness and your choice of four types of syrup. But that was then...

Now, two, maybe three decades later depending upon how honest I want to be here; I was on my way to IHop again in a Buick. We walked in and I felt like that character from mythology that flew to close to the sun. This wasn’t the place I remembered. Whose design idea it may have been I don’t know but, you could see directly through to the grimy kitchen. Three kitchen workers looked up at me from their work. They sneered as if I had just arrived unannounced to their kitchen at home. They looked over-worked and a bit pissed. I put my head down and followed what appeared to be a tenth-grader/host to our table.

The room seemed much smaller than I remembered; much dirtier too. I took the menu from the table and whipped away the food left on the seat by the last customer. I rested my forearms on the edge of the sticky table trying to take it all in. The place looked as if it had not been painted since I was there last. Thirty-five to forty percent of the paint from the deep window sill had chipped way revealing hunter green underneath the creamy white. The room had a yellowish, golden hue as if we were sitting in a recently emptied deep fryer. I ignored my friend’s expression which suggested both blame (me, for a bad choice) and fear (of the meal to come). I tried to make light of the situation as we waited and waited for service. A waitress finally came over. “Sorry guys, I didn’t see you over here in the corner.” (The restaurant floor is all on one level) We asked for water and coffee and if we could just place our orders then rather than waiting for her to come back. After some consideration, she finally agreed leaving me to feel as if I had been done a great favor.

People entered the room, were seated and served while we waited. We caught the waitress in passing and asked for cream and sugar for the bitter coffee. There’s nothing like craving coffee and receiving a rancid cup from a dirty pot. Yummy. I found it extremely odd that when she came with the sugar packets she asked me to pass her their container. She did not give us a few packets to get started. She fumbled and adjusted and re-adjusted the packets until they all fit neatly in their container. This took maybe five or six minutes and was more than a bit painful to watch. OCD? I don’t know what was happening but, for a moment I was weirded-out. About fifteen minutes later our meals came. I had the mushroom and spinach omelet. It was covered in canned strange yellow “Hollandaise.” It needed no Hollandaise, canned or fresh. Why then? I believe that the answer most likely is; because this big ass country loves goo? It also came with a stack of pancakes. Who needs to eat a large omelet and a stack of pancakes? Anywho, the mushrooms were raw and the spinach barely blanched. I love mushrooms and spinach and was starving by this point so...

As we ate I surveyed the room further. My friend asked if this experience would, “appear as a blog post tomorrow?” I lied and said that it would not as I was distracted by an attractive blond woman who seemed to be flirting with me. The big black dude she dined with had his back to me. I never know when people are flirting with me unless they are obvious. She was obvious. “Maybe she wants to trade up,” I thought aloud and moved on to obsessing about the enormous woman to my left who handled her bacon more delicately than I have ever seen. “Then the magic words, “let’s get out of here” came from my friend.

We were done and it was time to go. As I left I felt ashamed for some reason. Again, walking with my head down, I could hear discontented rumblings from my stomach. I sent my friend a text message later that evening, “Hollandaise hated residence in my tummy. It left quickly with little notice.”

Oh well, I’ll always have high school...

BTW: I came across this on the internet on 05/16/12