Dear My-Waitress-From-Lunch-Today

You are not very good at your job.

I’ve been here several times and have had the change to be waited on you and most of the other waitresses here.

You are the worst one here.

Now, look, don’t take it too hard, in any group of people who all do the same thing, there has to be someone who is the worst. That’s just how it works. At first I thought maybe you were just having a bad day, but I’m in here every week and realized that no, this is just how you are.

Here are some of the differences between you and a good waitress:

1) You don’t seem to care

Again, we all have our days when we hate being at work. As far as I can tell, however, that is every day. You exude a sense of “I would rather be anywhere else” and it is reflected in everything that you do.

Tip: fake it.

You don’t have to go overboard with it and be all “HI! HOW ARE YOU? WELCOME!” but you can smile and be pleasant even if you don’t feel like it. Sometimes that’s what having a job and being a grown up requires, especially in the service industry.

2) You are not very observant

Almost any other waitress in this place will ask me, “Do you want a diet coke, no ice?” when they seat me. I know you see a lot of people over the course of the week, but the fact that every single other waitress knows this reflects on you.

However, that’s the most minor example.

On Tuesdays, your restaurant sells burgers for 50% off. It is, I feel safe to say, your busiest lunch day (although there are still plenty of empty tables because this is a small town). 99% of the time I come in, it is on Tuesdays.

When I sit down and immediately put the menu down away from me at the table, I’m ready to order. I walked in the door knowing what I was going to order. It’s the same thing I get every Tuesday.

Finally, I was seated right next to the waitresses’ “station” where they refill drinks, etc. When you delivered the meal, my drink was already less than 50% full. You didn’t notice. Eventually when I was almost out of something to drink, you asked if I wanted a refill.

That was also when you asked if everything was OK—about 10 minutes after the food had been delivered. I was nearly done, and now you ask if everything is OK? See point #1 above.

Tip: When the glass hits 50%, refill it, or at least offer to. Ask “Are you ready to order or do you need a few minutes?” when seating someone. Check in at least once after taking the order before delivering the food. Check back about 3 minutes after delivering the food, and once close to when I’m done. Take away empty plates, glasses when you do. Yeah, I know there are busboys, but trust me, it helps. It doesn’t get so busy that you can’t do all of those things. Trust me, I’ve seen you all milling around. It will go faster if you keep busy.

3) You missed the basics

You never introduced yourself. Most every waitress I know hates being called “miss” or “ma’am” and I can understand that completely. But if I have no idea what your name is, what choice do I have? But beyond that, it makes things a little more friendly and it costs you nothing.

I ordered a “bacon cheeseburger, plain”. You looked at me as if you had heard a strange noise. You were clearly confused by this, and had you asked I would have explained that I meant no lettuce, no tomato. Someone must have figured it out, because it came without it.

You didn’t ask how I wanted it cooked.

You didn’t ask if I wanted fries instead of potato chips.

At the end of the meal, you had just delivered me a full refill on my drink and I was just about done eating. A good waitress would have taken the opportunity to ask either or both of these questions:

1) Would you like dessert? (increases bill and therefore your tip)

2) Would you like a to-go cup? (doesn’t get you anything but goodwill from the customer, and the cost of the cup itself is worth that. You’re just going to pour out the drink anyway.)

Instead you simply dropped off the bill and walked away after saying “I’ll take this when you’re ready.”

Maybe you’ve missed the fact that your tip is generally based off of the percentage of the total food bill. Fries add $0.75 to the bill. Dessert would have been probably $3-4. My total bill came to $4.17. With a minimal amount of effort, you might have been able to double that, which could have doubled your tip.

For one customer it’s not that big of a difference, but multiply it by everyone you’ve seen all day, and just by asking maybe you’d get 15% of the people who decide to get something else, and maybe you get a 10% increase in your total tips.

Tip: Ask more questions. Your job is basically to ask “What can I get you?” for which you are paid money. Don’t cut corners, you’re hurting yourself in the long run.

Aside: I wonder if this is a restaurant where all the waitresses pool their tips and divide them evenly. I hope not, because that allows someone like this to feed off the work of others.

Waiting tables isn’t easy, but you’re making it harder than it needs to be.

I Heart TJ

One of the downsides to having a short, kinda vague Twittername is that people use it as an abbreviation for all sorts of things

I get messages for “TJ Maxx” (who are actually on Twitter as @tjmaxx) and “Trader Joes” (also on Twitter at @traderjoes) and various other TJs.

This wasn’t a huge deal until Twitter changed “Replies” to be “Mentions” but now I see them all, like this one:

Was supposed to go to Baja this weekend w/sis, after watching CNN I think we’ll stay home. The boarder crossing @TJ but be horrendous

Yes, that’s the original spelling and words, copied verbatim.

The good news for you is that it reminded me of a story.

TJ goes to TJ

A few years ago I went to Tijuana with some friends. The Wife couldn’t go with me, so I thought I’d try to pickup something for her and our son.

And found nothing.

All in all, the trip was rather disappointing and I had absolutely no desire to go back. We didn’t see much besides poverty and sadness. Oh, and shopping. Lots of shopping. One of their favorite slogans is:

“I ♥ TJ”

which you have to admit is a pretty great motto, and more people ought to use it.

Finally, I decided that since I couldn’t find anything that I thought she’d actually like, I’d get her a gag gift.

Namely, a t-shirt which said: “I ♥ TJ”

As I was checking out, one of my friends told the nice man who was selling me the t-shirt:

“His name is TJ, and he’s buying this as a present for his wife.”

To which the man said, with a heavy accent but in clear English:

“Oh, very nice. Maybe for her birthday you get her a picture of yourself in a frame.”

He said it with a smile in his voice, and that’s when I realized that snark truly is a unifying part of the human experience.

All I can say is: well played, sir. Well played.

The Church of Atheism, part 2

(It’ll help if you’ve read Kurafire’s original post and my reply and then his reply. The latter post is quoted, in part, below:)

I knew there was some component I had wrong in my supposition. I wonder though: do the clergy pay for the food they eat at church? I’m genuinely asking because I simply don’t know, but I need to know for my essay.

Clergy don’t eat at church (well, unless there’s a potluck).

Catholic churches often have a “rectory” where the priest lives, which is attached or close to the church building.

Some Protestant pastors live in a “parsonage” (house owned by the church) but they provide their own meals, etc.

Tax exemption is more for the organization than the individual. For example, the church office needs a new computer, its purchase price would not be taxed. However, if the pastor needs to rent a car or a hotel room while at a conference, they pay all the taxes on that as well. (I’m not sure about property taxes for property owned by the church, but pastors who own their own homes pay property taxes on them.)

I never intended to lob all religious people in with the TV evangelists or other extremists. I was merely listing them as an example of people even on the “highly advocative and vocal side” who actually care more about money.

I’m well aware that those people are, in fact, a minority — but do keep in mind that they still reach audiences of many millions of viewers.

Good points.

These are great things to read; if you have other examples feel free to email some to me, I’m hoping to pick a few truly wonderful ones to include in my essay as examples of good, positive things the churches of the world do.

One of the best examples would be the Interfaith Hospitality Network {which has, unfortunately, changed its name to “Family Promise” which leaves an icky taste in my mouth because a) it’s meaningless and b) we’re all aware of how the term “family” can be used and misused. I’ll refer to it as “IHN” because that’s how I knew it and their mission hasn’t changed.}

IHN helps people (generally women with children, but I don’t think that’s a requirement) who are temporarily homeless not become permanently homeless. They do this by housing folks who would be homeless in churches. Rooms that would normally be used as Sunday School classrooms or meeting rooms are transformed into makeshift bedrooms. Each church hosts for 1 or 2 weeks at a time, each family in their own room, and provides meals for them.

The IHN Coordinator (generally someone with a degree and/or experience in social work) helps the adults try to find work and housing, as well as address the situations that led for them becoming homeless in the first place (generally bad financial decision making).

Children are expected to go to school, and the IHN Coordinator will get them enrolled if they are not already (very often they are not because the family “couldn’t afford” to send them to school, so IHN helps get them the supplies/clothes that they need.)

Typically, IHN guests stay in the “system” for 8-10 weeks, but it’s a safety net that catches people who would otherwise fall through the cracks, and helps them get back to living independently.

Two more local ones: several area churches get together at our local Episcopalian church on the last Sunday of the month and serve what is referred to as “Loaves and Fishes” lunch. It’s a free meal (and each person can take either 4-6 “to go” meals) meant to help people who would otherwise not have enough food to last until the end of the month. We have a lot of folks on welfare, and even the ones who make the best and most efficient use of their welfare checks often find things are “tight” at the end of the month. All of the food is donated, and all of the people who prepare and serve it are volunteers.

(There’s a side issue here about how much more expensive it is to buy decent food versus crap junk food, but that’s off the track for our discussion.)

Secondly, the local Lutheran church has a clothing giveaway several times a year where people bring in clothes that would otherwise sit in closets (or get thrown out!). They are sorted and checked (make sure they are clean, etc) and then given away. Again, this is a church so small that they have trouble paying their pastor’s salary, but they help thousands of people every year.

(Lutheran Social Services is getting ready to start a “mobile food pantry” in our area sometime in the next month.)

I do want to say one thing, though: all those things can be (and are) coordinated by any group of people coming together to just do good things, religious or not. There is nothing that keeps a bunch of atheists or agnostics from getting together and help others like that, and in fact I’ve seen that happen plenty of times (and participated/helped on occasion).

Absolutely true. There’s nothing that prevents anyone from doing things like these. I don’t believe that atheism/agnosticism equals immorality/amorality.

However, in my experience (having lived in MA, PA, OH, FL, and NJ) all of the groups that I’ve known about and worked with have had a religious component to their origin. The “Loaves and Fishes” comes from the Biblical story where thousands were fed from 5 loaves and 2 fish.

Traditionally the story has been interpreted as a miracle, “Hey, look at the magic trick Jesus pulled with the food!” but more recently it’s been argued (fairly convincingly, IMO) that what probably happened was that the people who were gathered saw one boy share what he had (what amounted to giving away his lunch, 5 loaves {which were probably more like ‘muffins’ than what we think of as ‘loaves’} and 2 fish) and others who had food but didn’t want to share it for fear that they wouldn’t have enough for themselves were moved to share what they had. None of them had a lot, but when they put it all together, they had more than enough.

(Aside: Somewhere, someone is screaming “SOCIALISM!” to which I respond, yeah, read Acts 2:44-45 about the earliest Christian community (so early that the word “Christian” hadn’t been invented yet). This is how they lived: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” Sounds like the early church was all about redistribution of wealth and wealth-sharing.)

Had the “Interfaith Hospitality Network” wanted to change their name to make it more inclusive of people without religious beliefs, I would have been fine with that. “Family Promise” sounds like one of those PACs where a bunch of divorced white men try to keep gay people from getting married. Or maybe I’m just cynical.

I’m not aware of any non-religious group that has done these things for a long term, usually for no money. That’s not to say that they couldn’t, I’m just not aware of any that do.

Painting all religious people with the same brush is a lazy argument and a stereotype. I’m guessing you’re against stereotypes, so let’s not make an exception that stereotypes are bad “except for those awful religious people”.

Again, I never intended to group all religious people together. Also, I never used the words “awful religious people” and I didn’t think you were attempting to make that look like a quote, but it does have the potential to be interpreted that way.

Eek, yeah, that was sloppy punctuation on my part.

3) I would be in total favor of the Mormon church’s tax exempt status being challenged after the lobbying work they did against Prop 8 in California. (For that matter I would be in favor of removing tax exempt status from churches which refuse to ordain women and/or gay/lesbian people.) Once your “church” has started pouring that much money to influence elections, you’re essentially a lobbying firm, not a church.

I think that opens up a can of worms as to where to draw the line. Separation of church and state should not be a large, fuzzy gray area—it should be very simple, strict and across the board.

Yeah, I’m torn about this. Religious organizations ought to have the same freedom of speech that others have, meaning that they ought to be able to speak for/against certain issues.

4) I think the USA ought to do what Europe has done for ages, which is to separate the religious and civil aspects of marriage.

Even in Europe it’s not quite as nice as you make it out to be. In some countries, gays can get married and have the same rights as heterosexual married people (unlike the gay marriage in the few US states that allow it). But in many countries still, those (civil) rights are not truly equal.

Sloppy writing on my part. What I would like to see is a model of separating civil/religious ceremonies like European countries (and perhaps elsewhere) have had for all heterosexual marriages retooled to open the civil benefits of “marriage” to all couples over the age of consent.

I’m aware that this isn’t yet how it works, but it is how things will work when I am appointed Supreme Chancellor. Alternatively, I think it would be a good way for the US Government to work towards.

The Same-sex Marriages wikipedia page has the breakdown on it all, and it’s not quite as across-the-board as “Europe” at all. Only five countries fully acknowledge & support it, though many (but still not all) do have a “Civil union” that covers most (and sometimes all) of the same perks as what used to be “Married”.

Quoted so people can have the link to that resource, and so I can say? “FIVE?” and woefully shake my head.

Still: it would be fantastic if the USA as a whole would go the direction of most of these European countries. It definitely would be a massive win for equality.

More importantly, it would get religion out of what amounts to a civil practice, which, quite frankly, I’m not sure it ever had any business being involved with in the first place.

(I don’t think anyone can make a coherent anti-gay marriage argument without a religious component, which means that it ought to be allowed in a country which is supposed to separate matters of church and state.)

And there you have the crux of the issue at hand and the reason why I’m increasingly vocal about all this: “supposed to” is not the same as “is”.

I heard Craig Barnes at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary give a great talk about issues of Church and State. I’m going to mangle this quote, but the gist of it is this:

By not establishing any state religion, the founding fathers did not intend for their to be no influence of religion on politics, only to prevent religion from taking over politics.

The whole issue is fairly nuanced. It would be a mistake to say that the USA has ever been a “Christian nation” or that our founding fathers were pinnacles of examples of Christian life and faith, but it would also be a mistake to say that the founding fathers envisioned or desired a country where religious beliefs had no impact either.

Ours is also supposed to be a representative democracy, and the last numbers I saw reported something like 75-85% of Americans “believe in God” (although what they means obviously varies a great deal). My belief in God leads me to want to see those whom society wants to ignore not ignored and those who are powerless given a voice. I’m 10,000,000,000 times more concerned about making the minimum wage a living wage than denying health insurance, etc to a couple because their genitalia happens to match. Why? Because we have seen that a “free market economy” will fuck the employee at every turn if there aren’t protections in place to prevent businesses from doing so, and I’ve seen absolutely zero examples of gay marriage harming anyone or anything.

(For that matter, I still want to know how we have untold billions/trillions of dollars of bail out banks but “can’t afford” to provide national healthcare.)

FWIW

It’s worth a lot. It really is, and I thank you for putting all of that down for me to take into consideration. Definitely keep pointing out any flaws I make in my rhetoric and claims, because I’m just as fallible as any man can be.

You’re welcome. Thanks for engaging in conversation. The Internet can be a difficult place for people with non-asshole-ish religions beliefs and practices, because we get lumped in with the Religious Right Talking Heads. It’s always nice when folks are willing to listen to what I firmly believe is the silent majority (I wish the “Religious Left” was better organized and vocal to offset the extremists on the right).

A Boy and His Gun

RePlayed video games from my youth. I don’t remember them hurting my wrists. It’s almost as if I had incredibly strong wrists as a teenager.

It’s not to late to star that

Saturday we went to a family party at a place called Dave and Buster’s

Have you heard about this place?

You have? And you haven’t told me about it before now?

I’m not sure we can remain friends.

For those who haven’t been, it’s basically a restaurant and bar with a giant huge ass vide arcade.

This is where I will live when I win the Powerball. (Note to self: start playing the Powerball if you want to actually win.) I will, of course, then require everyone else to leave, because it is ear shatteringly loud but you do get used to it after awhile.

Being a child of the ’80s, I was thrilled to find some classic video games. I’m talking about Space Invaders and Asteroids, people. Remember when video games were things you played for a few minutes with quarter, instead of massively involved life-altering “Let’s plan all weekend to attack the 47 levels of expansion pack 7 of World of Mysty Zombies?” (Not that we didn’t play these games for hours on end too, but there was a simplicity to it.)

Also, Joust? Still the best game that I love despite not being nearly as good at it as I wish I was. I’m still pretty good at Galaga though.

The Point of All This

The Wife had put The Boy in front of one of those shooting games which ran a demo every few minutes showing how the game was played. The Boy had no idea how to play, and therefore thought when he was playing whenever the demo ran (most kids aren’t very bright, at least not about some things).

I came over and decided that this would be a good opportunity for some father/son male bonding, so I fired up the game for real, we both picked up our bright red plastic shotguns and started hunting animals.

It really was quite fun, once you get the hang of it.

A few animals would come on the screen, you were supposed to aim for one kind but not the other, and you had to hit them in fairly specific places in order to get points. Each scene had 4-5 target animals and then it would show how well you did and start showing you the next scene.

At every one of these “intermissions” — every.single.one— my cherubic little 6.75 year-old son would raise a fist in the air and cry:

“There will…be blood… tonight!”

I have absolutely no idea where he heard this, but it’s pretty much the funniest thing I’d ever seen or heard.

The Church of Atheism

Exerpts of what kurafire wrote:

Suppose we (“we” being my fellow militant atheists and I) were to create a “Church of Atheism” where everyone who joins it becomes part of the organization. Providing it gets big enough, it would give the Church organization—and hey, everyone who is a member—a complete tax break. You’d be employed by this church as well and suddenly have a loophole through which you can create a way for you to no longer pay taxes.

you can bet your ass-wallet on it that a lot of people care more about money than their faith. I mean, all those TV evangelists? They themselves care more about money than their faith, for fuck’s sake.

Now obviously such a movement would cause an outrage among the religious right and the Government will be forced (by religious groups with influence) to pass a law closing the loophole, but wouldn’t it be interesting if it managed to bring to table the discussion of ceasing tax exemption for religious organizations? Either that, or stop providing them with any of the public services, as I joked about earlier.

It would be true equality, and from then on the only thing that would separate us from one another is our willingness and ability to be good, respectful, tolerant human beings. Or, for those that can’t muster up such simple things, to not be able to suppress the rights of others—including their right to be good, respectful and tolerant people.

Several responses:

1) It is not true that “people who work for churches don’t pay taxes”.

Clergy are actually classified as “self employed” and therefore pay twice the social security tax that a regular employee would make. On the other hand, clergy are NOT considered self-employed for the purposes of income tax (which would HELP them).

So clergy get screwed by taxes just like everyone else. In fact, slightly worse.

Non-ordained folks who work for the church (and members :-) are taxed as usual.

2) I agree with you about TV evangelists being general fuckwads, but let’s not cast everyone with religious beliefs in with the worst extreme examples, shall we?

Our church, for example, started a program to provide food (that was either easy to cook or didn’t require cooking) for grammar school kids whose live in homes where they may not be any food for them to eat over the weekend (i.e. children of drug addicted parents who sell the welfare checks for drug money). It’s not a long term solution to the drug problem, etc etc etc but food got to kids who need it. This was all donation-driven and started because of our members who teach in the schools started to hear about kids who get free/reduced school meals during the week went all weekend without anything to eat.

We’ve provided backpacks and school supplies for many years, which became popular enough that a lot of other churches in the area started doing it as well. The schools contacted us and asked us if we’d take on a different project: sneakers. We now have a closet full of sneakers and fund that we use to buy new ones when needed which are given to kids who need them. (These aren’t fancy name brand sneakers for fashion conscious kids, these are sneakers that fit for kids who would otherwise be wearing ones that were too small or worn out.)

There’s no cafeteria at our high school, which is 2 blocks from our church. About 10-12 years ago a guy in our church started preparing and serving lunch to our youth group kids. Pretty soon they started bringing their friends. We now feed 80-100 high school kids every week. Those who can pay $2 for as much as they can eat. Those who can’t pay get the same open door. Every week, all school year long. Two other churches in the area heard about the program we started, and they started similar lunch programs.

We have an Emergency Needs Fund which helps people in dire situations keep their electricity from being shut off, or helps them pay for prescriptions that they need. About a year ago someone made a list of all the various “social welfare” programs that the church supports and came up with a list of about 30.

How big is the church that’s doing this? We see between 80-100 in worship on most Sundays, at least half of whom are retired on fixed incomes, located in rural Appalachia.

I’d be willing to bet that you would find more churches doing this type of work than those filled with hateful people. The problem is that, like most groups, it’s the extremists who make the news.

Painting all religious people with the same brush is a lazy argument and a stereotype. I’m guessing you’re against stereotypes, so let’s not make an exception that stereotypes are bad “except for those awful religious people”.

3) I would be in total favor of the Mormon church’s tax exempt status being challenged after the lobbying work they did against Prop 8 in California. (For that matter I would be in favor of removing tax exempt status from churches which refuse to ordain women and/or gay/lesbian people.) Once your “church” has started pouring that much money to influence elections, you’re essentially a lobbying firm, not a church.

4) I think the USA ought to do what Europe has done for ages, which is to separate the religious and civil aspects of marriage.

Tax breaks, Durable Power of Attorney, Inheritance, Hospital Visitation, all of those “civil” liberties would come with the certificate you get from the Justice of the Peace at the courthouse (or whatever), and should be available to anyone over the age of consent to anyone else over the age of consent.

Want a religious service? Go to a church, but the religious service doesn’t give you the civil aspects of marriage. That you get from the courthouse.

That way churches can decide who they will and won’t marry (as seems appropriate to their beliefs) but there is absolutely no reason why the Mormons not wanting gay people to get married should prevent a gay couple from being able to get health insurance.

(I don’t think anyone can make a coherent anti-gay marriage argument without a religious component, which means that it ought to be allowed in a country which is supposed to separate matters of church and state.)

As I mentioned on Twitter, I know a lot of people (my Dad was one of them) who said that he would have considered getting married “in the church” but not “in the state” because he wanted his assets to go to his kids. There are a lot of people in that situation.

I completely understand the anger that people feel when they see the extreme religious right zealots out there. Just remember that they’re extremists, not elected representatives. (I suppose the Pope is sort of elected, but there are a lot of Catholics who think the Pope/church’s stance on condoms, etc is narrowminded and stupid, and the Pope certainly doesn’t represent the bulk of Christians, nevermind Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, etc.)

Those arrogant talking heads get on TV because they make for a better story than our little church way out in the country which is going around trying to make the world a better place for those in need.

For what it’s worth.

Oviparous

Scene: Driving The Boy home from school (kindergarten)

Him: We learned a new word today?

Me: Oh? What word was that.

Him: Oviparous.

Me: HAHAHAHA. Oh really? And what does "oviparous" mean?

Him: It means an animal that lays eggs.

Me: … Wait, is that a real word or one you made up?

Him: No! It's a real word our teacher taught us.

Me: Oh! Ha, right… Really? I've never heard that word before.

Him: Really?! You could tell your friends that you learned it from your son!

Me: (trying to contain my laughter) Yes, I suppose I could…

Him: You could tell YOUR teacher that YOU learned a new word!

Me: (who is in school part time) Yes, I suppose I could do that.

Him: I bet your teacher would be impressed that you knew that word…

Me: Well, I'm impressed that you know it.

Moral: having a college degree in English doesn't mean you know ALL the words.

Memories of Dates Gone By

This story is dedicated to hotheadred who has inspired me to buy Photoshop and learn how to use unsharp mask. I mean, seriously, What!

(Also, it’s long, but it’s worth it. Ladies.)

Scene: High school, my senior year.

I met the girl I thought I was going to marry one day. We met on a retreat and bonded over some heavy, emotional baggage, with a side of mutual attraction. A few weeks went on, some more emotionally intense stuff happened (e.g. a mutual friend’s father died unexpectedly, just days before our friend was supposed to go to the *first Gulf War, meaning that he didn’t end up going, which we had all hoped for, but this was obviously not the way we wanted him to get to stay home)*.

Hours were spent on the phone, followed by pages of letters being written, (letters… how do I explain letters? See, back before email, we used to write stuff down on paper, and mail it to people, and they’d get it a couple days later. Yes, days — I know, crazy, isn’t it?) and yes, tapes were indeed mixed.

We also shared a few fairly, ahem, intense… hell, you couldn’t really even call them “dates”, really. We had done all of our talking already, so when we got together there was, um, less need for talking. Nothing anyone could get pregnant from, but plenty we could still both enjoy. (Insert me blushing 18 years later.)

We lived about an hour apart, so we could only be together a few times, but as I said, we were in constant communication in the days when that took a lot of effort.

Then she dumped me, and later slept with the aforementioned mutual friend on or about my birthday about two months later.

So. Yeah.

Not only did she dump me, she did so about 2 weeks before my Senior “Semi-Formal” to which I had already bought tickets, and had already told my friends about this amazing girl (who none of them had met) who I was going to be taking.

So. Double Yeah.

I talked another girl, who was just a friend and who knew the whole situation. She let me know that she would love to go to the dance with me. She also somehow managed to do so without it seeming like the pity-move that you’d pretty much have to assume that it was.

But I didn’t care, I was thrilled. She was cute and fun and I knew we’d have a great time.

Now you may find this hard to believe, but I was the guy who would go to one of these dances and just go absolutely nuts. There were only 43 of us in my class, and about 20 of us had been together since 1st grade, and we just had a blast together. I’m sure we all looked like idiots during the “fast” dances and like awkward pendulums during the slow dances, but no one cared. Well, I didn’t.

The day of the dance arrived, as did my date. She looked super-hot, plus she was “the girl from another school” which was always a big deal (you know that intrigue of the “outsider”). We tore it up on the dance floor, and just had a superlative time. Honestly, I forgot that I hadn’t planned to go with her, and probably had a better time than I would have if I was with the girl I thought was The One.

After the dance we realized that neither one of us had eaten, so we stopped at a local pizza place (where else would two overly-dressed teenagers go?) ate, talked, laughed.

Later we rented a couple of movies and went back to my mom’s house. We sat on the couch watching them. No, really, we were! I was sitting on one end, she had laid down and put her head on my leg. I remember thinking that I had been dreading this night before she had agreed to go with me, and was amazed how much fun it had been.

I looked down to discover that she was looking up at me. Next thing I knew, we were kissing (it’s amazing how flexible your neck is as a teenager) which was completely unexpected, but—I must say—really, really nice.

Then she stopped.

“I’m sorry…. I think I’m going to throw up.”

Which she did. Fortunately she made it upstairs to the bathroom first; unfortunately, she spent most of the night in there throwing up.

It was pretty much obvious to anyone who wasn’t me that the likely culprit was food poising from the “seafood salad” she had eaten at the local sub shop, but, boy, let me tell you, there’s not much more damage you can do to a teenage boy’s sexual self-confidence than go from kissing him to several hours of retching.

I remember this story whenever I’m tempted to think of how “fun” it would be to be young and dating again. The Wife and I will periodically look at each other and express our gratitude not to have to date anymore.

I assume all of you are smart enough to get the reference:

Elaine Benes has inspired more white people to dance than all the Budweiser ever brewed.

But I would like the record to reflect that I googled ‘elaine seinfeld’ from the reception hall, while on a very sketchy Edge data connection, just to make sure I spelled her name correctly.

Because I care. About you, and about quality.