Monday, May 14, 2007

• Hometown Buffet
  (How I hate thee)
  

  
  For Mother's Day, I wrenched myself out of my anti-social ways and went to over to my parents. They'd promised a Mother's Day feast, then I could return to studying for the final exam I had today. Having this great excuse to leave right away, I agreed.
  
  If I had known the feast was going to be at Hometown Buffet, I would have scheduled a raincheck. But I would have felt bad, since it was mudders day.
  
  We get to the mall. I hate the mall too, but that's another story. Hometown Buffet is at the mall because if it wasn't, no one would ever drive to one.
  
  The line at the front of Hometown Buffet leads off into the sunset. Or, you know, to the doors of the mall itself. I never see people in line at this place. It's horrible. This bodes ill. It's God paying me back for changing my ways and pretending to be a happy go lucky scamp rather than an antisocial ass. It's depressing. The line is probably 30 or so people, and 90% of them are 80+ years old. I may be an ass, but I find it sad when people that old have to stand in one place for extended periods of time waiting to be served 'food' that tastes like hospital food with any accidental flavor rinsed off in the kitchen sink. I've eaten plenty of hospital food, I worked at one for over a year, so I know this.
  
  I'm only impatient when I know the outcome is going to suck anyway. This becomes one of those 'doctor's office moments' - when you know it's going to suck but you have to do it anyway.
  
  The place is full to capacity, and in fact, beyond. An hour and 5 minutes after we arrived, we were seated. The counters of 'food' were at the edge of the horizon. That didn't matter, if I'd been sitting next to the food it still would have smelled like a soggy dishrag and nothing more.
  
  In fear we'd lose our table, I waited for my parents to come back with plates laden with 'food'. Then I try to go. But the whole world was up there, visiting with each other and generally not moving at all so anyone could get to anything but one side of the salad bar.
  
  So I put about 2 ounces of lettuce on my plate and drenched it in ranch dressing. I was so thoroughly over the place I had no appetite. I didn't care. I went back to the table and proceeded to eat my salad. My parents, who each had about 2 pounds of food on their plates, judged my failure to staggeringly load my own plate, and they continued to eat.
  
  It doesn't take long to eat 2 ounces of salad. I had my plate empty while they were only halfway through their glutton of food. So my mother kindly said, "Well, no wonder you're so heavy, you eat like a pig."
  
  This is where I would have got up and said I had to go study and left, had I drove. Instead I said nothing. At this point, I wasn't going to get anything else to eat even if the place completely cleared out and the food was handserved to me. So I sat, thinking to myself - "This is the point when some homocidal maniac with a gun on him would probably have pulled it and just shot the place up." I have no gun. I may be homicidal though, having thought that.
  
  After another plate of food my parents go for dessert. It looks plastic. My father comments that the ice cream has no flavor. My mother argues that he must have gotten the yogurt instead of the ice cream. I think he found some swirling plastic dispensing machine. I wanted to argue that yogurt does, indeed, have a flavor, but what's the point.
  
  Finally we leave. Or try to, Some old lady in a wheelchair stops halfway through the doorway to talk with someone right outside. If I had been next in line I would have helped her out, but it was my father. So we stand there. I want to leave so bad I probably had little fires buring in my eyes. I turn around and go around the counter and leave through the entrance, the door still held open by a line of people waiting to go in and have a miserable time.
  
  Or maybe that's just me, the person who posesses the skill to have a miserable time no matter what. My parents would take that side of any argument. Even if I was having fun they'd claim I wasn't. Well, this time, I wasn't.
  
  Incidentally, no, neither of my parents had a clue how irritated I was, nor do they realize how shitty that comment to me was. I'm too much of a pussy to tell them and hurt them like they repeatedly hurt me. Lacking that skill is also why I'm a shitty manager, by the way. Not the skill to hurt someone, but the skill to say what's on my mind.
  
  I think for Father's Day I'll be gravely ill.
  

  • 7:59 PM
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