May 24, 2009:

The Night Terrors

I feel as though I'm coming down with a cold or influenza. My mind--which isn't super powerful to begin with--is flying at half mast. Enjoy! That's what we were told to say during waitress training at Marie Calendar's: "Once you've served everyone and made sure they don't need anything else, don't just walk away. Always say 'Enjoy!' so they know it's time to eat." In response I broke out singing the theme from "Alice," also known as: "There's a New Girl in Town, and Ah'm Feelin' GOOD!"

Of course I didn't. I could barely make eye contact with people back then, let alone sing a classic song like "Theme from Alice." Let's face it: a waitress who can barely make eye contact is every patron's dream. "Why don't you stay home and get your own extra napkins?" was my other ace in the hole. I worked in 5 different restaurants over the course of 6 years and succeeded in not bringing smiles to hundreds of faces.

The other fun thing about Marie Calendar's waitress training was that they told us to tell customers that "our ranch is our blue cheese" when discussing our salad dressings. So the conversation would go like this: "What kind of dressings do you have?" "We have italian, ranch, honey mustard, french, and fat-free italian." "Do you have blue cheese?" "Our ranch IS our blue cheese." "Oh, does it have blue cheese in it?" "No."

Enough living in the distant past, let's talk about the recent past: one night a couple of years ago, Buddy and I got chased by a gang of neighborhood skunks. We went for a run right when it was newly dark. Dusk and its aftermath are/is my favorite time of day. Up on the hill where my parents live there's hardly any traffic after dark, so it's really pretty and serene and what have you. Buddy and I were enjoying a great run despite how tired I had been before we started. At the time it felt like a magical transformation might be underway. Then I saw this little group of skunks crossing the street up ahead of us.

For the interrogationists among us: you can tell a skunk in the dark by the flared tail and the way it runs. With their tails up in the air and the weird skitter that they have, in the dark they look a lot like oversized scorpions running back and forth across the street. Talk about when nature goes bad.

A few seconds after they had disappeared behind some cars they ran back across the street in the other direction, and they had halved the distance between us. Buddy went apeshit and I started cussing and running as fast as I could in the opposite direction, with Buddy trying to yank us back towards the skunks the whole time. We got away, but not without making a scene. Thanks a lot fat dog, you stuck it to me yet again.

The end.

love,

Skunks Ahoy

Added May 24, 2009