You remember that Mexican restaurant I talked about in this post?  Well folks, brace yourself for the shocker of the century: we went back after church again today.  Yep.  I told my family that I thought we should go to the other location of the restaurant so as not to be recognized by Tyler, the server who waited on us twice in one week.  But no.  They were in agreement that it didn’t matter if Tyler recognized us.  In fact, they mistakenly believe that Tyler recognizing us is a good thing.  We leave Tyler a good tip = Tyler gives us great service. 

     We did endure quite a lengthy spell of bad service there, but obviously we weathered that storm.  And for good reason.  You see, this particular restaurant offers free kids meals Sunday through Wednesday.  And I’m telling you that with every bone in my body I am convinced that when they see us coming they regret ever having said that they offer free kids meals Sunday through Wednesday.  They can’t possibly make money on us.  It’s just fiscally impossible.

     The whole free kids meals thing is partially to blame for my embarrassment.  I don’t want people to think that we only go there because the kids eat free.  Although free kids meals are definitely a motivating factor.

     Also though, I have a thing with food.  I don’t like people to watch me eat.  I won’t eat unless the person I am with is eating as well.  I don’t eat food unless it is either: a) made in a restaurant or b) made by someone I know.  And for some reason, the whole loyal customer at a restaurant thing really plays into my food paranoia.

     Yeah.  Another one of my fun quirks.

     So today, as we walked up to the restaurant, I said a silent prayer in my head that Tyler not be at work today.  But alas, Tyler was.  And by golly wouldn’t you know that Tyler was more than happy to serve us.  Again.  The poor lad is begging for punishment I tell ya.  And when I ordered the same old chicken tacos, he suggested perhaps I give the shrimp version a try for a change.  My face, I’m sure, turned a thousand shades of red and I politely explained that I’m not big on fish.  Be a dear, Tyler, and move on to the next person please.  Let’s not talk about what I’ll be eating today.  Please.  Oh.  And get this.  Today, Tyler offered to give us drinks without charging us. 

     I. Was. Mortified.

     Both my daughter and my husband think it’s a kick in the pants that I am embarrassed by this sort of thing.  And really, when it gets right down to it, I know it’s ridiculous.  But when Tyler knows my family well enough to pretty much peg what each of us is going to order, I gotta say, I want to crawl under the table and hide.

     This is why we sit on the patio.  I figure that if we sit on the patio we won’t bring as much attention to ourselves and our gaggle of children.  Luckily, Jayce seems to have overcome the whole food throwing phase he went through, but between his occasional shrieks, Cassidy’s constant belching (that’s another story best saved for posts that don’t involve food), and Kennedy’s refusal to touch anything that Cassidy has touched, we make for a fairly loud and unforgettable family. 

     So you can imagine how thrilled I was when a woman who either could see dead people or had indulged in one after-church cocktail too many was seated one table away from us.  We had just barely been served our chips and salsa when I noticed the two older girls snickering away and trying to hide their faces in their napkins.  Apparently I had been so busy feigning indifference that I failed to notice when our new table neighbor began speaking quite loudly to “Mom.”  She wanted to have a perfectly normal conversation with her mother.  Perfectly normal, that is, had her mother actually been there.

     At one point though she grew tired of conversing with invisible mom and decided instead to pick on invisible Bob.  “You’re a bad man Bob.  And you’re not going to fool them into thinking you aren’t.  I’m going to tell the country about you Bob.”

     We heard all about Bob’s indiscretions.  And how the President of the National Association for the Blind was going to rip into Bob for his indiscretions.  And how the woman was going to let the entire country know of Bob’s indiscretions.

     But she didn’t just shout these things at invisible Bob from her table.  Oh no.  She would stand and stagger past our table to the edge of the patio and shout at the top of her lungs towards the parked cars in the lot.  And when she’d said her piece she’d stagger back past our table to hers.  

     Now, my older two certainly appreciated the free entertainment while they dined but as for Cassidy and Jayce, um, not so much.  Cassidy took it upon herself to shout back at the woman to “Stop It!” and to “Be quiet!”.  Behavioral issues, of course, are an inherent challenge with Cassidy’s disability and we do our best to quell issues when we can.  But this, my friends, was a difficult situation to say the least.  Throw in Jayce’s intermittent pleads to the woman to “STOP!” and you could say we had a bit of a circus going on.  My favorite though was when the woman told invisible Bob that, “they’re laughing at you.”  I really can’t be sure who the “they” in question was, but oh how I hoped invisible Bob wasn’t offended.

     Yeah.  So as it turns out my suggestion to patronize the other location of the Mexican restaurant probably would have been a good choice today.  Because if we had we likely wouldn’t have become center stage entertainment in the place where more than anything I wanted to don a sombrero and disappear.  I could have just enjoyed my tacos and faded off into the mariachi inspired background.

     Stand up and take notice my friends.  I was right.  Again. 

     Hmmm.  That makes me realize something.  I need to start a  category along the lines of, “Times I was Right.”  I may just have to do that.