Dining Contract

December 19th, 2005 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0) |

The other night, my younger brother Joe and I were standing in front of a mexican restaurant, trying to decide whether to eat at the mexican place, or the sports bar right next door (where I had eaten lunch only hours earlier). He told me to go with my gut (literally), so I decided dinner would be mexican. We walked in the restaurant and the host asked if we would prefer “smoking or non” and we said “non”. On the way to the non section, I looked up and saw on a small TV that the Hawkeye basketball team was playing – and I had forgotten about it. I knew that only a hundred feet away, at the sports bar, the Hawkeyes were playing on six big, flatscreen televisions.

My eyes widened as I turned around and spoke to Joe through clenched teeth, “I want to watch the game next door. Can we leave? I don’t know if we can leave.” We were getting closer and closer to the table.

“I think we can leave,” Joe said, also through his teeth, as the host placed our menus on the table.

“Turn around,” I said to him, my eyes wider still, “we’re leaving. Go.”

Joe turned to the woman who was just about to put chips on our table and fumbled through a phrase like “were going to, er, leave…” We quickly and akwardly walked out of the restaurant, past all of the patrons whom we had passed ten seconds ago and made our way to Hawkeye heaven.

When we sat down at our table, I asked Joe if it was okay to do what we had just done. I mean, we never actually sat down. When does the dining contract officially begin? I don’t think it’s when you start heading to a booth. At least I hope not. Because then I would really feel bad.