Smile-breaks
My Ice Cubes Went Flying Into His Territory
The water went flying; battalions of ice cubes attacked the table and then slid icily onto the floor in a flood of water. One of the cubes – maybe two? - slammed into the knee of the guy in the next booth over. He jumped, looked around behind him, and then went back to his meal like nothing had happened. So polite.
What a great way to start the year. Everyone in the place is staring at me. The waitress is soothing me, “Don’t worry. We’ll clean it up. Do you want to move over here?” She directs us to a tiny booth squeezed against a window, far away from any other customers. Out of ice cube reach.
They’re still staring. It was only water. I never saw anyone get moved from a booth because they spilled a little water. Well, a whole big glassful of water. My jeans were drenched, but only on the side of my leg. I put my napkin over it.
They never did refill my water glass. Don’t know why… I got pretty thirsty, but I was too embarrassed to ask for more water.
We no sooner squeezed into our new quarters than our waitress dropped a cup of hot sauce. Salsa splatted onto the floor and dripped down the back of the booth we’d just vacated. The busboy hurried over, but she shooed him off and cleaned it up herself.
I felt a lot better, but no one noticed her spill. They were still staring at me.
My dad never uses straws in his drinks any more. Too dangerous, he says. Once too often he accidentally brushed his hand against the straw sticking out of his glass and toppled the glass and all its contents onto the table.
Eating out is quite hazardous. You gotta know what precautions to take. My dad’s rule about no straws is a good rule. ’Specially if there are kids or teenagers in your party. Straws provide magnificent sport when your meal doesn’t arrive promptly. The covers - you know all about that, right? You’ve done it. Yeah, you have…
The cover shoots out across the table to attack the unsuspecting cheek of a brother or sister. This starts straw-cover warfare, which often leads to balled-up napkin activity, which can lead to…
No. No utensil warfare. If you can’t respect the silverware, you have to eat at home. Straws and napkins and dairy substitute cup towers are fair game in a family restaurant when no one’s looking and the waitress or meal is taking forever to get to you, but no utensil warfare. And there’s a two-minute limit on the straws ’n napkins stuff. Enough is enough.
There are space limits to be honored, too, or Miss Manners will descend from the heavens to admonish you. Not one straw, napkin, dairy creamer or sugar packet is to leave the air space over your table.
That’s where I broke the rule. My ice cubes left the perimeter of our table and invaded a stranger’s territory. That’s why everyone was staring at me.
I never intended to set off a barrage of ice cubes flying around the restaurant. There wasn’t even a straw in that glass. I was only reaching over to move it to a more out-of-the-way spot when it jumped up and fell on its side, flooding the table and bombarding the floor with pellets of ice.
If those cubes had stayed in our air space, no one would’ve noticed and the waitress wouldn’t have moved us and I’d prob’ly still be sitting in a pool of water trying to act like nothing happened. And wondering how in heck I was going to walk out of the restaurant without anyone seeing that huge wet spot on my jeans.
I made it out all right, but seemed like there were a lot of grins on everyone’s faces... Like I said, eating out is hazardous.