Girls' Night

Jennifer and I had a girls' night last night, because it had been far too long since we'd had one and it was NECESSARY. And we went to our favorite Italian place, because it is delicious and because pasta.

Our waiter approached the table and began describing the specials. I noticed something was wrong when he used the word "smokey" around ten times to describe a chicken salad. When he had to pause and think to remember the word "sweet," our suspicions were proven correct. Either our waiter was as dumb as a bag of potatoes, or he was stoned out of his mind.

First, he made the yummy butter dipping stuff. Then he promised us bread. But no bread came. We waited and waited. I began wondering who I would have to slay in order to obtain the bread, as I stared at the cheese and browned butter and pepper. This dipping sauce is amazing. It is the sort of stuff you want to mainline, but instead you eat it.

But for all I know, Waiter Guy WAS mainlining the browned butter. Either that, or something much stronger.

Something like meth.

When he returned and discovered no bread had appeared, he said he'd find one of the bread people. They were confused, he said. But he wanted us to have a phenomenal time. He then used the word "phenomenal" four more times. I counted.

He took our orders, we both wanted the same penne dish. Moments later, he returned.

"The chef is a little confused about your order," he explained. "You wanted the butternut squash ravioli?" He asked, staring at me intently.

"No," I said. "I wanted the mushroom penne. And so did Jennifer. And we wanted bruschetta."

"Ohhhh," he said. "Right!"

And then he promised us bread again.

I wanted to go find the bread. I was hungry. The 30 Day Shred has made me hungry all the time, and I imagined that taking down Waiter Boy, stealing his notebook, and writing out various orders to the kitchen that would result in food appearing much faster, and much more accurately. It didn't help that he appeared so dazed. Jennifer and I found it difficult to believe that both the bread guys AND the chef would be so confused. We were positive it was our waiter that was confused, especially since he had forgotten our relatively simple order in less than a minute.

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When the bread finally appeared, I was half-certain it was a mirage.

But then the restaurant manager came over to our table.

"I wanted to let you know that I'll be taking over your table," she said kindly. "Your waiter had an emergency. I didn't want you to think you'd been abandoned!"

When she left, Jennifer and I met eyes over the table.

"I think the emergency was that he got fired," Jen said.

"It was the emergency of sleeping off controlled substances," I said. Undoubtedly, our waiter was passed out in the walk-in, or in the backseat of his ramshackle car, which was almost certainly the kind of car with fist-sized holes in the side paneling where rust had eaten away the metal much the way drugs were eating away the waiter's brain.

This is your brain, I thought, picking up a bruschetta toast. Then I took a bite. This is your brain on meth. Apparently, meth thinks your brain is delicious. Because I thought the bruschetta was delicious.

"At least he wasn't like Staring Guy," I continued.

I had discovered from sources within Staring Guy's restaurant that he had, in fact, been discovered in the kitchen...taking matters into his own hands, as it were. Apparently, he found the female restaurant-goers attractive enough, this was how he had decided to spend the time he wasn't spending refilling water glasses or removing plates from tables one at a time. Thankfully, my source knew which night the chef had walked in on Staring Guy, and it wasn't the same night he was staring at us. We can only hope it was a one-time event.

I am going to maintain the belief that it didn't happen more than once. Otherwise, I would never be able to eat in a restaurant again. Especially not at that one.

Jennifer agreed. Staring Guy had been incredibly unpleasant to be around for all of us. Apparently, he had also been unpleasant for his employers (not to mention unhygienic).

I looked around for Drugged Out Waiter when we left the restaurant, in case he was loitering around waiting for his drug dealer or parole officer to come pick him up. But no.