The Fine Dining Of Indecision

eating-outLast night, after Brittany returned home from work, we headed out to grab some food and visit a friend of ours. You might think this sounds like a simple affair. You would be wrong.

The decision to go out to eat is often a simple one that leads to enormous and daunting complications. Primarily, we can never arrive at a mutually acceptable decision concerning where we want to eat. Often, not even the type of food can be agreed upon. Fast food? Restaurant? Mexican? Italian? Chinese?

What basically happens is that we pile into the car and hit the open road, intent on enjoying the journey rather than the destination, because the decision about the destination is something that is often made for us, and born out of equal parts frustration, starvation, and geolocation (the proximity of the nearest building with food in it when all negotiations break down often being the chief determinant.)

So last night, after driving off down the street, I play the role of the loving and supporting man, and ask my lovely little lady where she would like to eat tonight. She first tells me, “Anywhere. I’m not really hungry, so I don’t care.” My first impulse was to greedily accept this obviously Opposite Day answer and make a beeline straight to my (current) favorite restaurant to indulge in a delicious steak. However, this not being my first time riding the dinner choice rodeo bull, I suspected that there was more to her answer than she was saying. So, I pressed her again. This time, she suggested a drive-thru only fast-food joint that I obsessed over (and then burned out on) long ago. I countered with my own offer of someplace more local, as her suggestion was several miles down the road, in a neighboring town – and we were at the height of rush hour traffic.

She immediately fell back to her original position and repeated her cavalier and non-committal opinion. She didn’t care, she said. Of course, I said that I didn’t care either, and this went on for several minutes and several miles, as we wandered the strange and boring streets of our little, barely-bustling metropolis. I started making suggestions, and she started shooting down all of them.

“Oh hey,” I said, “there’s that good Mexican place we ate at the other day. How about that?”

“Yeah, but we just had it the other day,” was her simple, definitive reply.

“How about hamburgers. We could go to — ” she cut me off.

“It’s too hot for hamburgers.”

“Too hot?”

(It was at this point that I received The Look, which is a firm and unforgettable expression that roughly translates to, “I know whatever I just said doesn’t make any sense, but asking me about it would be A Tragic Mistake.”)

“Um…” I began to feel around the blind darkness in which I was trapped and stumbling. “How about…” More delays. More hesitation, hoping for inspiration. “Hey!” I suddenly beamed. “I know! How about Tony’s?!” (It should be noted here that Tony’s was my aforementioned first choice, which I knew she would not accept at the time, but might later, out of desperation.)

I swear to you, her eyes sighed. “Ugh!” she began, “We eat there all the time!”

“But last time, you didn’t even eat. You just got a coke…”

“…and I just sat there, watching you take an hour to eat, because you order an ocean of food and eat maybe a third of it, one tiny, microscopic bite at a time – and if you start talking, you go on a rant and forget to take bites between the yelling and the soapboxing!”

“Well, you could have ordered something.”

“I didn’t want another steak. Again. Every single night! Steak! Steak! Steak!”

“Ok,” I said with a tinge of hurt and sadness, “Where do you want to go, then?”

Another eye-sigh. Followed by an eye-roll. Followed by The Look again, only this time what it said was unrepeatable, on account of the fact that the words of the English language can’t actually bite you.

“How about Chinese?”

“All we have are buffets,” she explains to me. “And you hate buffets.”

“I don’t hate buffets.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t!”

She began flailing her hands around in what was either a visual aid to expressive language, or some bizarre and complicated form of sign language involving curious finger flicks and threatening gestures. “YES,” she shouted, in frustrated, capital letters. “You do! You never want to eat at buffets. You go on and on about how they’re unhygienic and foul and that the food isn’t ever good.” Her hands stopped convulsing and she just pointed at me and grinned. “You know you do!”

“Well, yeah,” I said, so sheepishly it may have come out as baaaah. “I mean, they’re not clean. You know that. Not with the people we have in this city. They poke their fingers under the sneeze guards and root around the different dishes like pigs digging for some sacred chicken wing. It’s gross. And they never use a new plate. And, besides – I don’t think it’s wrong to want my food cooked for me, rather than just made en masse and schlepped out by some minimum wage bus boy with a grudge.”

She folded her arms and looked at me. “Are you done?”

“What?” I said, with the quaint innocence of a clueless man who’s significant other knows his patterns of behavior all too well.

“I was just waiting for you to come down off the soapbox.”

I resented the remark. “That wasn’t a soapbox rant,” I said. “That’s just the truth. You know it is! You know the bus boy doesn’t get any tips, and he’s got to haul the food and clean the tables – and what’s to say he’s not having a bad day and decides to take it out on my sweet and sour chicken?”

“Just let me know when you’re done.”

“But — ”

“No, really. Go on. I’ll wait.”

I threw up my hands this time, which was unfortunate, since I was driving. I quickly put them back on the wheel. “You want a Chinese buffet? Then that’s what we’ll have!” I pulled into a nearby shopping center. “There’s one right here, actually! See? See how I anticipate your every desire?” I pointed at the nondescript red door of the Peking Chinese Buffet in triumphant defiance. “Let’s go!”

I parked the car, and we got out and began walking across the parking lot. I was the one who spotted the sign first. I wish I hadn’t.

“Um,” I said with a scared softness in my voice, “I don’t think they’re open.”

Brittany kept walking and simply asked, “Why do you think that?”

“Well, I’m just guessing based off of the ‘Re-opening Soon’ sign that’s taped to the door.”

“Are you serious?!”

“Yeah, see it?”

She walked a little closer, just to confirm it with her own eyes. She’s learned not to trust me on certain things, if I think I might get a laugh out of it. Sadly, I wasn’t teasing this time, and the place was, in fact, closed. We sighed a little and laughed a little, and got back in the car.

Eventually, we made it to the next town over, where we almost wound up eating at her originally suggested place. I managed to modify the destination slightly, however, and good food and good times were finally had. Of course, it only took us over an hour of driving around in circles and bickering like old married people. I enjoy the bickering, though. It’s just something we do, all the time – especially when it comes to deciding where to eat. It’s like gastronomical foreplay, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.




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5 Comments on “The Fine Dining Of Indecision

  1. LOL I love how in every part of the story where I'm "angry" I actually wasn't, and when I *was* angry you had me laughing. Interesting. I had fun last night though, want to try again tonight?

  2. I love the joint with the red door. I'm glad to know that Curt and I are some of the lucky few who NEVER have this fight.lol

  3. Two good things:

    1. Good thing you love someone so much that bickering seems delightful!

    2. Good thing she doesn't mind the bickering and loves you back!

    Very cute story!

  4. burratesThe Chinese Bistro next to the Kroger on Dowlen is excellent. No buffet. Cooked to order. Reasonable prices. Excellent lunch prices. Large servings. Actual Chinese waiters, all quite personable and friendly. You can add and delete as you wish to dishes. Excellent house special fried rice. Dinner Pink linen napkins fanned out is classes. A beautiful chandelier quite intimate setting. Try it. You will like it. Everyone we have recommended it to has. mammie

  5. Keep a jar in car with all the places you like to eat or would like to try. Get in the car , flip for who draws, draw a card, go there no questions or exceptions. Problem solved. Mammie