Last week,
my son graduated from Middle School. To
celebrate we told him we could go to any restaurant of his choosing. Hmmm, where would he pick if he could pick
anywhere? After a few moments thought,
he declared “Five Guys”. Oh. Ok. We
like Five Guys and we’d certainly get off cheap with this choice but it seemed
a bit anticlimactic. Graduation ceremony
followed by counter service at a strip mall?
It seemed like it would make his graduation a non-event. (Not to mention, as time passed, I’m sure he’d
forget it was his choosing and then would bring it up years from now. He’d tell his wife and kids how cruel we’d
been; degrading his important celebration.)
I kept suggesting other options and suddenly one stuck -Benihana.
So after a
hot but lovely graduation, we went to Benihana for our hibatchi
experience. Until we were seated, I had
forgotten that they seat you with other people to fill the grill table. Sometimes that can be fun if you get a good
group. We were seated between two dud
families. (Although, we
could’ve been the duds. We’re not so
outgoing ourselves… Sigh.) We had our drinks and salads and waited for
our table chef to arrive. The kids were
anxiously awaiting the onion volcano…
Finally our
chef arrived and he didn’t really look Japanese. He looked Hispanic. Which is fine because it’s all about how they
cook, not who they are. But his nametag said,
“Chow”. Really? “Chow”?
And he said, “Mira, mira” to the
server over something on the order sheet.
And Chow isn’t even a Japanese name is it? Perhaps a more ambiguous name would’ve been a
better choice? Mineo, Elgo, Ren? (Yes, I did just look up names.) Something
vaguely Spanish/Italian/Japanese/Filipino? Something ending in a vowel. I don’t know… Chow just seemed like an odd
choice. But maybe the name Chow just
means we are going to chow down on his watch…
Anyway, we
had our food “show cooked”. We saw the
rice heart and the onion volcano. The
kids had Japanese soda whose glass-marble-stoppered bottles were very exciting
to them. The kids had a good time and we
loved watching them. My daughter and I
giggled over our chopstick follies and my son didn’t even bother. He likes to just shovel his food in and the
chopsticks aren’t easy for him. Suddenly
I had an epiphany… Ready for my new business plan?
I am now promoting
my New Celebrity Diet! (I will have to
become a celebrity first but I’ll worry about that later.) I am going to write a book and sell videos
and go on the Today Show to promote it! Here’s
the premise: Can’t wait to start
dropping pounds? It’s (drumroll) The Chopstick Diet! Let me explain… I am okay with chopsticks
but, since I don’t use them regularly, I am awkward and inefficient with
them. Towards the end of the meal my
hand is even tired from straining those muscles. And
I keep dropping my food. I realized that
I should eat ALL my food with chopsticks!
There is no overeating if it takes me forever to eat and if I have to pick up each morsel
2-3 times. I was thinking that if I eat
everything with chopsticks- cereal, chips, pudding- I will be able to shed
those last 10 lbs of baby weight in no time! You can even eat ice cream on my diet! But it has to be Dipping Dots. And you have to use the chopsticks. One little Dot at a time. No slurping or lapping it up out of the bowl-
that would be cheating. Maybe I’ll even
design my own chopstick line. If I make
them really slippery, saggy and skinny the diet plan will work even better! (I’ll
just have to lock up all my silverware to make sure I stick to it. We all know I’m not so disciplined…) Keep an eye out for my new late night
infomercial!
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