Not Just Another Saturday Night

 

Save me from picky old women! Three Saturday nights in a row I’ve been seated next to a woman who never married and another who divorced her husband back in the ‘60s and never remarried. I’m changing things up, doing my weekly trip to the fine dining restaurant on campus on a different day. The last straw was sitting through them both bad-mouthing the waiter---again--- and they weren’t just all talk. They’ve tried to get him fired. The poor seventeen year old can’t do anything right in their eyes. For example he asked if he could clear our plates from the table. “This is fine dining,” one of them said after he left “you’re not supposed to ask, you're supposed to just remove the plates.” Early on when the place first opened he wrote on the back of our receipts, “You are loved” and one of these ladies reported him, said in the business world he’d get fired for sexual harassment for doing that. She was highly offended by that note and as she was talking I’m thinking with all the crap going on in the world, why oh why can’t you let things like that go! He wrote the same thing on everyone’s receipt, it wasn't like he singling her out in stalker fashion, for crying out loud.

The kid is gay with half a head of long, orange hair and half a head of short black hair and recently he went to court to legally change his name. He lives in a house with 4-5 roommates and has had eleven surgeries so you know there’s got to be a sad or drama-filled back story here. And he talks too much---even I’ll admit that when put in a position where I feel I need to defend the kid. One of the big-bad sins he commits to tick off the Old Ladies is when we’re first seated he tells each of us at the table things like: That’s a pretty scarf; I love your pin; That color looks good on you; or You have a great smile (what he tells me often). I’ll bet if he was a cool, dimple-faced Brad Pitt-type waiter instead of a short kid who has a tummy that threatens to pop a few shirt buttons they wouldn’t be so offended by his attempts to connect. He normally works in the Memory Care and Assisted Living buildings and is pulled over to work on our part of the campus when they are shorthanded which is often in this climate of perpetual short staffing in the restaurant business. The cream-of-crop wait staff in town end up in the downtown places where they can make tips in the hundreds instead of here where they’re not allowed to accept them.

This particular Saturday I thought I’d explode listening to the same old broke record. Russia and the U.S. were having a pissing contest at the Ukrainian border and the anti-masks/anti-vaccines/anti-government truckers were blocking the ports between the U.S. and Canada which in turn shutdown some auto assembly factories and these ladies had nothing better to complain about than being asked if the waiter can clear the dishes off the table? We got into the 'service conversation' when I said I just let things like that roll off my back. "Life is too short," I said before being told “We are paying for fine dining service and we should get it.” I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying it was them, not the waiter, who was spoiling the fine dining experience. I wanted to shout, "It IS a pretty pin. You DO look good in that color and I DO have a great smile."

I’m so glad I still have a filter left in my brain that a lot of older people lose because I was thinking the woman who never married probably was so picky and prickly when she was in her prime that no one ever asked her. The other woman at least owns up to being as she herself says, “the biggest complainer on campus.” Her justification for being a complainer is, “How are they ever going to learn the right way of doing things if no one ever tells them?” Like her or not (and she has many likely qualities to off-set her pickiness) she’s up front about who she is while Old Maid---not to be confused with the delightful Never Married who I wrote about in another post---presents herself as a pious---well, I won't finish that thought because I need to go back to bed and get up on the other side.  

In order to not sound like a complaining, judgmental old woman myself I’m going to end this negative post with a bunch of things that make me smile: 

- Puppies trying to crawl up a flight of stairs

- A litter of kittens sleeping in a basket

- Long stem roses fully open

- Sun flowers standing in field  ©

Note on the Photos: The summer before the pandemic I got to drive by this field of sun flowers every time I left my house. It always put me in a good mood to see these guys standing facing the sun. For some odd ball reason one flower head never turned to follow the sun like all the other flowers. I spent way too much time trying to figure out why it didn't want to conform....