Adventures in Solo Dining

I go out and eat by myself fairly often.   One of the many perils of doing this is the often frustrating often surreal "overheard" conversation.  You are trying to read your book but you just can't filter out what ever odd or insipid thing someone is going on about you.   

The other night I am sitting in a booth and two twenty somethings are seated directly behind me.  At some point they both start going off on a rant on political correctness and how people have to complain about everything and have no life all punctuated by profanity every sentence.  At first I kind of missed what was the trigger for this rant going on directly behind my head.        

Then  I start piecing it together. 

On each table in this particular restaurant is a drink menu.  On the cover is a photograph of a man and a woman seated at a bar.  The man has a blue drink in a martini glass; the woman has a beer in a mug.  I had noticed the picture before and I admit had given brief thought to how the picture ran counter stereotype by having the woman hold the beer and the man with the cocktail ( I also had given about as much thought to how incredibly stiff and almost sour both look in the picture).   Apparently though this photo was just wrong to my accidental dining companions.  That they had given her the beer was a sign of how political correctness was ruining everything.

Sigh I wanted to turn around and point out that the photo had done its job and grabbed their attention, but of course did not. That would have been rude. 

Comments

[Cheri]

Touché. Sometimes being "rude" is worth (to turn a Susan Powter phrase) stopping the inanity! ;o)

[Anon]

Lewis Black (from the Daily Show) has a great routine about the sitting alone in IHOP and hearing the woman behind him say, "If it wasn't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college." Great stuff; probably online somewhere.