I asked a neighbor of mine what he did for Christmas last week. \u201cWe went out to eat at a fancy restaurant,\u201d he said. \u201cThat Denny\u2019s is a real nice place.\u201d<\/p>\n
No question about it, \u201cfancy\u201d is a relative term.<\/p>\n
Truly fancy places don\u2019t serve food, they serve courses. Each course arrives at your table amid a sense of calculated excitement, sometimes contained under a domed cover so the waiter can unveil the offering with a dramatic flourish. Secretly, I am always hoping something unexpected \u2013 or even horrifying \u2013 will have been accidentally substituted for the actual entree. \u201cMy apologies, sir. Those were not supposed to be actual lady fingers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, less elegant eateries pile all the courses onto a single plate. I prefer that. It gives me the opportunity to size up the entire meal at a glance, eat the best stuff first and pace myself.<\/p>\n
I once knew a guy who never used a napkin, and would boast about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t need one,\u201d he would say. \u201cI never slop food on myself, so a napkin is a waste of time.\u201d Unfortunately, he employed the \u201csame boastful air in his other personal habits. \u201cI never wash my hands after going to the bathroom,\u201d he bragged. \u201cDon\u2019t need to, because I never miss.\u201d<\/p>\n
It may be hard for you to believe, but he has never had a girlfriend.<\/p>\n
When our kids were young, we never took them to anything resembling a fine restaurant. The object was just to get in, fill \u2018em up cheap and get out of there. My son Chris especially loved going out to eat but always ordered far more than he could actually polish off. As my mom used to say, \u201cHis eyes are bigger than his stomach.\u201d<\/p>\n
Okay, but if that was the literal truth, Chris would now be a carnival attraction.<\/p>\n
One time, we took our kids to a restaurant in Anaheim, Calif. The plan was to have a quick breakfast and then spend the rest of the day at Disneyland. As usual, 8-year-old Chris decided to order an enormous breakfast of eggs, pancakes and link sausages suitable for any 320-pound NFL lineman.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot so fast, pal,\u201d I warned him. \u201cDon\u2019t order that big meal unless you plan on finishing the entire thing.\u201d He insisted that he was utterly famished and that without the big breakfast he might be too weak to last the entire day.<\/p>\n
I looked at him hard. \u201cOkay,\u201d I said. \u201cBut if you don\u2019t eat every bite, Disneyland is off.\u201d It was a weak bluff on my part. Why would I have driven the entire family a thousand miles, just to turn around and go back because one kid ordered too much breakfast? But Chris seemed to buy the premise. He nodded and said, \u201cDon\u2019t worry, dad. I can do it. I\u2019ll eat it all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before long, breakfast arrived and we all started to dig in, especially Chris. I had never seen him work his silverware with such precision and purpose. For several minutes, I became distracted talking to my wife. When I finally wheeled back around, I couldn\u2019t believe my eyes: Chris\u2019 plate was empty! He sat grinning at me triumphantly.<\/p>\n
\u201cWay to go!\u201d I announced. \u201cYou really did it! Disneyland, here we come!\u201d But as my wife led the kids out to our car, I lingered behind, playing a hunch. Sure enough, on the carpeted floor just below where Chris had been sitting laid three link sausages. The carpet seemed not to have been cleaned in years, so the still-warm links were partially covered in old fibers, lint and unknown hairs. I wrapped the hirsute sausages in a napkin, slipped them into my pocket and headed out to the car, formulating my plan.<\/p>\n
About a half-hour later, just as we had parked in the lot outside of Disneyland, I turned slightly towards Chris, who was sitting in the backseat. \u201cSo you ate all of that breakfast, huh?\u201d I said. I could see him beaming in the rear-view mirror. \u201cI sure did!\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n
Then I delivered the shocking sentence: \u201cRight. All except for \u2013 THIS!\u201d I held the three damning sausages aloft. Chris\u2019s face twisted in horror, as if suddenly thrust into the shower scene from \u201cPsycho.\u201d For a moment, it looked like he was considering snatching the hairy links from my hand and forcing them down, fuzz and all, thus fulfilling his part of our bargain. But instead, he broke into tears. \u201cI\u2019m just too full, dad, he wailed. \u201cI\u2019m just too full!\u201d<\/p>\n
Chris might have been a bit sneaky that day, but he was no liar. He really was too full \u2013 as we discovered out about an hour later on the Space Mountain ride.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I asked a neighbor of mine what he did for Christmas last week. \u201cWe went out to eat at a fancy restaurant,\u201d he said. \u201cThat Denny\u2019s is a real nice place.\u201d
\nNo question about it, \u201cfancy\u201d is a relative term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-16478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16478"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16478\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16478"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=16478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}