WHERE THE DEVIL DON'T EAT
or, the pda of the beast.
It's been a while since we had a good tale of
restaurant-visit absurdity here on TWM. This one, like one of the first ones, takes place at Panera.
All Adam and I wanted on Monday was a quick lunch to steel ourselves for a grocery shopping excursion to the Market District Giant Eagle in Shadyside. (If you're a local reader, and you've ever been there, you know there really isn't enough steel in the Sears Tower to handle it, but every little bit, and a whole lot of Mt. Dew, helps.) I should have known it was a bad sign when I couldn't get a parking space in the lot. And an even worse sign when no one sitting in traffic on Centre Avenue would give us room to cross. (You know, as if letting a couple of hungry pedestrians pass in front of their bumpers might somehow set them back an hour on their lunch-time commute.) And I probably should have just grabbed Adam by the arm and led him back to the curb -- though it probably would have been an hour before we were allowed to cross again -- when I saw the cell-phone gabber on the way in let the door slam in the face of a cell-phone gabber on the way out, who returned the favor by letting the door slam on a sunglassed text-messager on the way in. But I didn't.
I should have. But I didn't.
So in we went. We had to wait behind Sunglassed Text-Messager, who stopped text-messaging long enough to take four -- count 'em, four -- pieces of bread from the sample basket by the door. Adam and I each took one -- because we possess manners and propriety, and because we were afraid that if we took any more, Sunglassed Text-Messager may have taken them from us.
We got in line -- four parties deep in a single line that queued to the next open register -- and were almost immediately besieged by two old women, one on the right and one on the left, as if they'd coordinated an attack on both of our flanks, trying to weasel up to one of the registers, as if the six people waiting patiently three feet away were just taking turns reading the menu and trying to keep the aisle clear. Before I could step up and ask them if our line was interfering with their cutting, or at least, George-Costanza-like, remind them that we're living in a society here and that, in societies as in neighborhood restaurants, we wait our turn in line, the guy at the head of the queue, more subtle but far less funny than I, pointed out the rest of us, which they acted like they had not seen -- oh, six people all in a row, my gracious! -- and grudgingly moved to the back.
But this was all just the prelude. The warm-up. The opening act of annoyance for the day's headliners: the couple of early-twenty-somethings -- he in his low-slung hospital scrubs, she in her low-cut hooker blouse -- who were third in line for the registers but behaving as if they were first in line to audition for the lead roles in Deep Throat 4: Tonsil Ticklers.
Now. Let me just say, for the record, that I have no problem with simple displays of public affection; a hug, a kiss, a playful nuzzle -- hell, even a discreet squeeze or two -- are all fine by me. I've been known to practice them all myself. But unless you're eating an ice cream cone, tormenting your little brother behind your mother's back, or Gene Simmons at a KISS concert, your tongue should never, ever be even half as far out of its own mouth in public as these two were. The last time I saw a tongue so grotesquely extended, it was pulling a severed head across the floor in John Carpenter's The Thing.
And I don't have to tell you -- though someone, apparently, should have told them -- that when in public, your fingers should never, ever enter anyone else's untoward orifices.
That's right, kids. As if it weren't bad enough that these two felt the need to perform throat cultures on each other while waiting in line -- watching them, I suddenly wished I could, Spider-Man like, shoot streptococcus bacteria out of my wrists -- it got even worse once they'd advanced to the counter. As she began to order -- you know, facing the register, so their back sides were facing the rest of us -- the young woman felt the need to start kneading her boyfriend's ass. And I don't mean just gently patting or fondling or massaging here. I mean kneading, like she was making a loaf of bread the size of his ass, and she had to make sure all the ingredients between his pelvic bones were sufficiently mixed. Once she'd finished ordering, and was thus able to transfer the extra brain power it took to remember her sandwich preference to the task (ahem) at hand, she really went to work.
It took her boyfriend an excruciatingly long time to order, in part because he seemed to have the IQ of a small woodland animal, and in part because by the time he'd progressed to his choice of side dish, she had at least two of her fingers (and, presumably, the cotton and denim beneath them) wedged so far into his ass that she should have just given him a prostate exam while she was up there. He stuttered and finished his order. I think he said chips, but he probably should have said cornhole muffin.
How either one of them enjoyed this process, or why they thought it appropriate for a lunch-counter demonstration, is a mystery. That neither my head nor his colon explode is a minor miracle.
Adam, bless him, seemed oblivious to the whole display. (He was near food and anticipating the eating of it; thank goodness for the prevalence and focus of his teenaged, insatiable gastronomical urges.) I kept wishing I had been.
Our turn came, we stepped up and ordered, then got one of those little flashy-vibrating things that chain restaurants use when you have a forty-five minute wait for a table. (What? It's too much trouble to say, Chad, or, Number 15, when my Asiago Roast Beef Sandwich is ready?) We passed a table for four that was occupied only by a guy, his laptop, and what looked like the remains of his breakfast from a few hours ago. (There's always one guy like that in every Panera; I'm starting to think they're on the payroll, for ambience.) We passed another table occupied by a guy with a Harley-Davidson hat on his head and a pair of orange Crocs on his feet. (A combination I never thought I'd see, nor want to see again.) And we sat at a table far away from the Panera Porn Stars, who, last I saw, still had all their clothes on, but were eyeing up a booth in the corner and, well, that couldn't have been a good thing.
As we sat and made small talk, and as I tried to shake the feeling that I would never want to eat at a Panera or even stand in line at a cash register again, I glanced at my receipt and saw that our order number was 666. It seemed fitting.
All Adam and I wanted on Monday was a quick lunch to steel ourselves for a grocery shopping excursion to the Market District Giant Eagle in Shadyside. (If you're a local reader, and you've ever been there, you know there really isn't enough steel in the Sears Tower to handle it, but every little bit, and a whole lot of Mt. Dew, helps.) I should have known it was a bad sign when I couldn't get a parking space in the lot. And an even worse sign when no one sitting in traffic on Centre Avenue would give us room to cross. (You know, as if letting a couple of hungry pedestrians pass in front of their bumpers might somehow set them back an hour on their lunch-time commute.) And I probably should have just grabbed Adam by the arm and led him back to the curb -- though it probably would have been an hour before we were allowed to cross again -- when I saw the cell-phone gabber on the way in let the door slam in the face of a cell-phone gabber on the way out, who returned the favor by letting the door slam on a sunglassed text-messager on the way in. But I didn't.
I should have. But I didn't.
So in we went. We had to wait behind Sunglassed Text-Messager, who stopped text-messaging long enough to take four -- count 'em, four -- pieces of bread from the sample basket by the door. Adam and I each took one -- because we possess manners and propriety, and because we were afraid that if we took any more, Sunglassed Text-Messager may have taken them from us.
We got in line -- four parties deep in a single line that queued to the next open register -- and were almost immediately besieged by two old women, one on the right and one on the left, as if they'd coordinated an attack on both of our flanks, trying to weasel up to one of the registers, as if the six people waiting patiently three feet away were just taking turns reading the menu and trying to keep the aisle clear. Before I could step up and ask them if our line was interfering with their cutting, or at least, George-Costanza-like, remind them that we're living in a society here and that, in societies as in neighborhood restaurants, we wait our turn in line, the guy at the head of the queue, more subtle but far less funny than I, pointed out the rest of us, which they acted like they had not seen -- oh, six people all in a row, my gracious! -- and grudgingly moved to the back.
But this was all just the prelude. The warm-up. The opening act of annoyance for the day's headliners: the couple of early-twenty-somethings -- he in his low-slung hospital scrubs, she in her low-cut hooker blouse -- who were third in line for the registers but behaving as if they were first in line to audition for the lead roles in Deep Throat 4: Tonsil Ticklers.
Now. Let me just say, for the record, that I have no problem with simple displays of public affection; a hug, a kiss, a playful nuzzle -- hell, even a discreet squeeze or two -- are all fine by me. I've been known to practice them all myself. But unless you're eating an ice cream cone, tormenting your little brother behind your mother's back, or Gene Simmons at a KISS concert, your tongue should never, ever be even half as far out of its own mouth in public as these two were. The last time I saw a tongue so grotesquely extended, it was pulling a severed head across the floor in John Carpenter's The Thing.
And I don't have to tell you -- though someone, apparently, should have told them -- that when in public, your fingers should never, ever enter anyone else's untoward orifices.
That's right, kids. As if it weren't bad enough that these two felt the need to perform throat cultures on each other while waiting in line -- watching them, I suddenly wished I could, Spider-Man like, shoot streptococcus bacteria out of my wrists -- it got even worse once they'd advanced to the counter. As she began to order -- you know, facing the register, so their back sides were facing the rest of us -- the young woman felt the need to start kneading her boyfriend's ass. And I don't mean just gently patting or fondling or massaging here. I mean kneading, like she was making a loaf of bread the size of his ass, and she had to make sure all the ingredients between his pelvic bones were sufficiently mixed. Once she'd finished ordering, and was thus able to transfer the extra brain power it took to remember her sandwich preference to the task (ahem) at hand, she really went to work.
It took her boyfriend an excruciatingly long time to order, in part because he seemed to have the IQ of a small woodland animal, and in part because by the time he'd progressed to his choice of side dish, she had at least two of her fingers (and, presumably, the cotton and denim beneath them) wedged so far into his ass that she should have just given him a prostate exam while she was up there. He stuttered and finished his order. I think he said chips, but he probably should have said cornhole muffin.
How either one of them enjoyed this process, or why they thought it appropriate for a lunch-counter demonstration, is a mystery. That neither my head nor his colon explode is a minor miracle.
Adam, bless him, seemed oblivious to the whole display. (He was near food and anticipating the eating of it; thank goodness for the prevalence and focus of his teenaged, insatiable gastronomical urges.) I kept wishing I had been.
Our turn came, we stepped up and ordered, then got one of those little flashy-vibrating things that chain restaurants use when you have a forty-five minute wait for a table. (What? It's too much trouble to say, Chad, or, Number 15, when my Asiago Roast Beef Sandwich is ready?) We passed a table for four that was occupied only by a guy, his laptop, and what looked like the remains of his breakfast from a few hours ago. (There's always one guy like that in every Panera; I'm starting to think they're on the payroll, for ambience.) We passed another table occupied by a guy with a Harley-Davidson hat on his head and a pair of orange Crocs on his feet. (A combination I never thought I'd see, nor want to see again.) And we sat at a table far away from the Panera Porn Stars, who, last I saw, still had all their clothes on, but were eyeing up a booth in the corner and, well, that couldn't have been a good thing.
As we sat and made small talk, and as I tried to shake the feeling that I would never want to eat at a Panera or even stand in line at a cash register again, I glanced at my receipt and saw that our order number was 666. It seemed fitting.
Posted: Wed - August 6, 2008 at 04:54 PM
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Published On: Jan 16, 2009 04:50 PM
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