Last
Saturday afternoon my mom was in town and she wanted to go to lunch with me and
my sister. She let us decide where we wanted to go, and I made the dumb mistake
of suggesting we go to the Olive Garden. Based on past experiences, I should
have known better.
I’ll let you see why.
“Would you like a wine sample?”
asks our male server.
“Yes,” says Jessamy, rather
enthusiastically. For how fast she pulled out her ID, you’d think she kept it
up her shirt sleeve.
“No thank you,” says my mother.
“No thanks, “ I say. I’m not
against wine with lunch, I’m really not. I just don’t like many wines. I’m also
very uneducated when it comes to vino, so I don’t even know the names of the
few wines I do like. Riesling maybe? Chardonnay? I really don’t know. I always
do a sniff test before tasting, which is typically very attractive and is how I
score most of my Friday night dates.
The server pours my sister a
sample, then goes to get our waters. We debate the menu. Our server comes back
to take our orders. “Are you done with this?” he says, reaching for Jessamy’s
wine glass.
“NO.” She reaches out to protect
the last swig—so possessive you’d think she stomped those grapes herself and
labored to make the drink on her own. I’m feeling a bit embarrassed about this,
but to make matters worse, she downs the last sip in record time and then hands
the glass to the man. I die a little bit inside.
“You embarrass me every time I take you to the Olive Garden,” I say, once
the server is out of earshot.
“Why?” she says.
“Because that just happened.”
“Why do you care?”
“Some of us are trying to find husbands.”
Jess raises an eyebrow, “And it was gonna be that guy?”
“Well not anymore,” I half-laugh.
It’s true. Finding a husband these days is rather difficult. I mean, I
have a hard enough time trying to get someone to visit me at my house. You
think I’m gonna be able to convince a guy to live here with me too? I don’t
even know what the issue is, because I have a very cute, tidy house and the
world’s comfiest couch. Maybe I should put that into my match.com profile.
A bit later our salad arrives. This time a woman brings it. She asks if
we would like extra cheese on our salad. Sister says yes. Lady begins to grate
cheese onto salad. I’m talking to Jess for a minute, then I realize the cheese
is still being grated. It’s like a snow blizzard has covered the salad. You
know, if snow blizzards were short, stringy, room-temperature, and tasted like
parmesan.
“Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. That’s enough,” I say to the server.
“Maybe that’s enough for you,” Jess says to me, clearly upset that I
interrupted her cheese flow.
“I could put some more on your plate if you’d like,” the woman offers. I
think it’s a joke.
“Yes, please,” says my sister.
She just did that. Got cheese grated directly onto her plate. And okay, I
get that she loves cheese. Most people in my family do. We have a Swiss
heritage. Cheese making used to be the livelihood* of our great-great-great
grandfather, Peter-Fred Grossen. People who
are lactose-intolerant practically get smudged out of our family line. If Grossens
had been raised Amish instead of Presbyterian, then not having cheese in your
fridge would nearly deserve a shunning. But
even if you have a cheese passion, you need to act with propriety.
 |
| These are my actual real-life living cousins. We celebrate our Swiss heritage with a parade every year. |
“You did that on purpose,” I say to Jess. Because clearly now she just
wants to do every embarrassing thing she can. And we haven’t even gotten to the
breadsticks yet.
Jessamy begins telling stories about work, and of how her new assistant,
Elsa, has a very unique personality. Apparently whenever Elsa gets upset, she
says “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!” Elsa also recommends that you lay with your head
over the side of the bed for at least two minutes a day in order for the blood
to rush to your head and stimulate hair growth. I guess one day Elsa bobbed her
head back and forth and was all “I think my hair is growing a lot faster because
I’m bending over so much at work.” So there’s that.
Our food arrives. I’ve ordered the never ending pasta bowl (fettuccine alfredo)
and Jess went for the Zuppa Toscana. My mother decided to get fettuccine as
well. We dig in. In case you were wondering, my sister and her husband’s first
date together was at the Olive Garden during their never ending pasta bowl
promotion. She ate three bowls and took one home. This is how it went down:
Jess posted on MySpace (because that used to be a thing, back in 2005)“I need
someone to go to Olive Garden with me for the never ending pasta bowl!” And
Travis said he’d go. Then it was happily ever after.
You might suggest to me that I try this find-a-date-strategy with
Facebook, but whenever I’m looking for someone to go somewhere with me, I
usually only hear from the crickets. I guess trying to get
a partner to help with my detective work sounds too dangerous. Or maybe it’s the
mention of wearing disguises that really puts people off. So instead I’ve
learned a better strategy is to post “first person to invite me to dinner gets
$100!” Because then not only do you attract the go-getters, but your date is
guaranteed to have some cash too.
At this point, we’ve all eaten one breadstick and there’s one remaining
in the basket. I look up at Jess and observe her behavior for a while. I look
back at the lone breadstick and regard it with the feelings one usually has
towards a solar eclipse. See, every other time I’ve been at the Olive Garden,
Jess will make sure all the breadsticks make it onto plates immediately, so
that way when the server comes by she can ask for more. I was mortified at her
25th birthday dinner, because I think she asked for 8 breadstick
basket refills that night. After that evening, the Olive Garden manager considered
starting a policy where people get their wrists Xed out if they’ve had too many
breadsticks. But then my sister started an Occupy Olive Garden movement, where
she encouraged all the patrons to stay as long as they could, peacefully
ordering breadstick refills.
Despite my sisters attempt to embarrass me completely, I’m in a good
mood. I start to joke around, but then pretty soon the joke becomes a serious
plan.
“You know. I could order some more pasta for you, and you could order a
bowl of minestrone for me, and then we could eat each other’s food.” Because I
mean really. Does it make sense to you? Should I eat three pounds of pasta,
salad, and breadsticks, when instead I could eat a bowl of pasta, a bowl of
soup, salad, and breadsticks? Either way, Olive Garden is out the same amount
of food. It’s just different people would eat it. But rule breaking must be
done discreetly. I slide a few noodles onto Jessy’s breadstick plate, telling her
to eat them immediately, then I’ll give her more.
It’s kind of like feeding a toddler, really. Only you have to do it when
no one is watching.
“We should keep ordering bowls and bowls of pasta, then we can both take
some home and I can have enough to last until I am gainfully employed again**.”
My mother interjects. “They only bring you one bowl at a time, so you can
only ever leave with one bowl.” Such a realist.
“Then this is what we do. Mom, you keep ordering more fettuccine, and we’ll
dump it all into my bowl,” I break into laughter. I usually laugh the most at
my own jokes, which apparently is a really annoying attribute. “Then we’ll get
a mountain of pasta this high,” I raise my hand up to the hanging lamp, “and I’ll
just be sitting here, eating pasta and acting like nothing happened. Then we
ask for a to-go container.”
Only we didn’t carry out our brilliant plan. Instead I had a few bites of
Jessy’s third bowl of soup, and she had a few bites of my second dish of pasta,
and we asked for just one more basket of breadsticks. No one left with Mount
Fettuccine. Also, no one left with a date either.
*Actually, I’m pretty sure his livelihood was dairy cows, not just the
cheese.
**Don’t worry. I have a savings account and can afford to buy groceries.
