Roughly three or four times a day, mankind is plagued with the necessity to consume matter. However, the process by which we execute this ritual is a source of stress rather than delight in my life and the lives of most undomesticated animals.
In a perfect world, everyone would be trapped in an underground bunker or a wrecked spacecraft, all forced to eat the provided bar of carb-packed non-matter, never subject to judgment, strange restaurant rituals, or waiter-induced guilt. However, much like clothing, food has become an elitist weapon of mass separation. Asking me to strut into a restaurant and confidently order a plate of appropriate food would be like asking an army of unskilled Tickle-me-Elmo assembly-line workers to march onto Wall Street and manipulate the aggressive economic climate of the talking-playthings industry. It’s not very likely and just loaded with tons of humorous potential.
Unlike most bipeds, I ate in a restaurant no more than 20 times between the ages of 0 and 15. Only four of these times were at a location other than our local buffet. In the cherished words of my dear father, “If I’m going to spend $8 on one meal, I better get three.” There we were. The Downs Six, semi-annually celebrating some mediocre family victory, marching unashamedly amidst the local walrus population. It was on these holy grounds that I acquired all of my infamous buffet etiquette:
1. Stay away from the salad bar, because pound per dollar is just a waste of everyone’s time.
2. Use a soup bowl for the mac & cheese. You can keep buffet mac & cheese separate from your other food as easily as you can stack a pile of water on the hardwood floor of the bowling alley next door.
3. The meat carving station should be approached with guilt and shame. This human being carving your pig is the only accountability you have during this two hour game. He carves out a small piece of your soul as you pitifully stutter, “dark meat, please, Mr. Slicey, sir.”
4. It’s not racist to skip the Chinese food island. It has a very specific taste that doesn’t often mesh well with the wholly American farm you just consumed.
5. The list of things that may have fallen into the chicken noodle soup is infinitely longer than the list of reasons to eat the soup. Stay away.
Now that I am mature and domesticated, I occasionally (and entirely accidently) meander into a real-life restaurant. I have a huge problem with these. The thought of walking into restaurants and demanding that a waiter be paid to humiliate himself by serving you food so that you may perform a basic human function is, to me, equitable to no less than prostitution and the entire institution should be illegalized.
I am panic-stricken when the host tells me there will be a 15 minute wait, and I must either return to my car and complete seven laps around the block, find the restroom and sit on the toilet in silence for 14 minutes or “take a call” and stand next to the dumpster awkwardly weeping with anxiety. After being seated and receiving 17 whispered definitions of confusing “food lingo” from everyone near me (“well-done,” “over-easy,” “vegan”), I jokingly order a Diet Coke and a large pile of Xanax.
However, here I am, attempting to ease the tension (that only I am aware of) by devoting 15 minutes to friendly conversation with the man I am about to boss around. “Oh I absolutely adored that movie; the characters were so real; how much extra for gravy on that pizza? My mother is a Scorpio too; can I substitute the brussel sprouts with a fudgsicle? I love your black outfit, so chic and broody.”
I, like everyone else, am constantly evolving and will one day be able to spend $12 on a meal at Coogies without thinking about the equivalent 24 Jack in the Box tacos that I’m not eating (Skeletor may jeer, but he does not judge). Dining out has become a cultural norm and although it is devastating that it makes me as tense as an oompa loompa hand-feeding baby carrots to a horse, I know that I must convert and learn to appreciate this institution. Maybe, someday, I’ll even get my dad to join me in bossing around some human equal. As he always says, “Can I get this to go?”
