Late Night Musings

It seems that odd things happen all around me on a daily basis. Now, I may be overstating the point, but I really don’t think so. Maybe it’s just that the same things happen to me that happen to nearly everyone else but that I’m more in tune with observing them. Either way, the events I do notice tend to lead to thoughts of wonder - mainly why?

The other night I went to a local diner with my girlfriend and a couple of co-workers. Now, I would expect to see some odd characters at a Long Island diner, especially with the lateness of the hour. I don’t know if it is the neon lights, the chrome accents or garish decorations, but weirdos are attracted to Greek diners like virgins to a Star Trek convention. And why is it that the Greeks have decided to monopolize the diner trade in the first place? I understand that 7-11s, gas stations and nail salons were already called for, but was there nothing else left? I think that an official at Ellis Island was just hungry one day as the ship from Athens came into port. I can envision the exchange now.
“Name?”
“Dinapolous.”
“Trade?”
“Dinapolous.”
“I don’t have time for this and it’s almost lunch. Make me a sandwich and you’re in.”
That’s how I see it at least. Of course I can’t even imagine the discussion over those placemats. Never has a more eclectic group of businesses been thrown together for the sole purpose of attracting customers than here. It’s almost as if someone tossed the Yellow Pages into a wood chipper and grabbed the first things that came out. But I’m getting off track here. We were discussing observations.

As I was saying, we were in the diner having typical diner food: grilled cheese (with bacon of course), burger, fries, club sandwich, coffee. Granted it was July and 80 degrees out and my girlfriend got a hot chocolate, but so far so good. No strange beings seated around us either. As a matter of fact, with the conversation that was emanating from our booth, we would have been considered the oddballs that night. The waitress was even semi-normal. She actually laughed at our attempts at humor, so bonus for her. She knows how to the increase the tip. So service was good, the food passable, and the bill in line with what we ordered. Even the fact that we were going to pay with $34 worth of singles isn’t too far out of the norm. I won’t go into why we had that many singles with us, but we had them and I’ll leave it at that. We leave the aforementioned tip on the table and proceed to the register to pay. Of course two of our group reached for that ubiquitous plate of stale cookies that they leave by the register for some reason. Does anyone think this is the perfect end to a meal? Dry, stale, flavorless, crumbly cookies that 300 people have had their filthy hands in throughout the course of the day? This is enticing why exactly? Anyway, suffice it to say, they took cookies and then continued to complain about how bad they were. But it was while we were discussing the free dessert offerings that the odd happened. A pizza delivery man came into the diner. This wouldn’t be too bad if he was maybe picking up an order to go so he could make it through his final runs with a decent meal in his stomach. No. Instead he came in carrying three pizzas which he promptly delivered to the manager, took his payment and left. Huh? Doesn’t this place serve food? And not just the same food all night long. You can quite literally get pretty much anything you desire. I could understand if they were a specialty restaurant that served the same thing all day long. Then people who work there could easily get tired of the same cuisine day after day, such as is possible with the pizza delivery guy, but that isn’t the case here. I could also understand if one person in the back maybe had a craving so he wanted to grab a slice – but three pies? That is more than a craving. That is dinner for the entire crew. How can I trust the place I have just eaten at if they won’t even eat the food they serve? And if you are going to order out, why do you have the guy come right through the front door? You would think that the people who created the Olympics, founded democracy and pretty much invented theatre would have enough imagination to sneak a pimple-faced teenager bearing Italian cuisine through the back door. Isn’t that something else the Greeks are famous for anyway?

I know I will never get an answer as to why this particular diner feels that their food isn’t fit for them to eat, and I know that worse things happen at restaurants on a daily basis, but those restaurants don’t flaunt it as brazenly as this one did. But maybe that’s a Greek attribute too. After all, I guess the ancient leaders in science and philosophy are allowed a bit of an ego.