Lunch is Just About the Weirdest Time of Day for Me #2

I've been planning to write this blog story for over a month, but didn't get to it until now. Oh well.

It all started rather innocently. I usually went home after camp and made lunch for myself, but I was getting tired of that. I decided to go to Cabot's instead.

The awkwardness began with the fact that I was alone. There's something not quite right about eating at a restaurant by yourself. It's just not meant to happen. To make matters worse, there was no room left at the counter, meaning I was forced to sit at a table meant for more than one person. Blah.

Even so, I wouldn't have minded so much. If it hadn't been for the fact that the waitress recognized me, there would be no trouble at all.

The waitress came to give me a menu. Eager to cut the awkwardness of sitting by myself without food to distract me to as short an amount of time as possible, I informed that I already knew what I wanted. I was planning on getting a chicken finger plate.

"Chicken finger plate?" the waitress guessed.

I shuddered. I suppose I go to Cabot's and order the same thing often enough that the waitress recognized me and knew what I want. I can't stand it when people who aren't supposed to know me do. It just bothers me. Unwilling to agree, I made a last minute decision. "Actually, I was going to have a hamburger."

"Oh," the waitress responded, sounding a little surprised, but only a little. "How do you like that cooked?"

"Medium Well," I answered automatically.

"Would you like anything - lettuce, tomato, onions - on that?"

I decided I wanted lettuce and pickle. "Lettuce, tomato, and pickle," I said.

Oh no! I didn't mean to order tomatoes. I really, really, really don't like tomatoes. I was about to modify my order when I realized, in all the awkwardness, I had somehow failed to order cheese.

"Actually, can I have a cheeseburger?"

I didn't want to modify my order twice, so I let the tomato thing slip.

"American cheese."

The waitress left and I waited awkwardly. Eventually, my food came.

There they were: the tomatoes. The situation was weird enough without me leaving the tomatoes on my plate. If I came back to Cabot's and had that waitress, she might think of me as the person who ordered tomatoes and didn't eat them. I shuddered again.

Willing to go to great lengths to prevent that terrible scenario, I picked up the better looking of the two tomatoes and took a bite out of it. The fleshy part was bearable, but the jelly stuff was just disgusting. I took another bite, wincing. Then, in a painfully large number of bites, I finished the first slice.

I decided it wasn't so weird to leave the second, especially since it was a little yellow in the middle, so I left that there. I then began eating massive numbers of french fries to get the taste out of my mouth. It didn't seem to want to go, but we were both glad when it left. Or I suppose it might have just been me.

-Marianne