Diner Diaries

Life and Times of a Patron of the King's Chef diner

Thursday, December 05, 2002

Mark the Reporter walked in as I was finishing my french fries, trying to decide what to eat to lower his cholesterol. Been there. Done that. After ordering a “modified King’s Chef Salad” (also known as a “Queen Salad with meat”), he read the latest issue of Maxim while Dread gave him a hard time.

Mark is still catching grief about my “gay” comments. He takes it well. The counter chick is wearing her Catholic schoolgirl outfit again, which inspires generous tips from the male clientele. She razzes him about some articlet he is looking at. Apparently all your choices along the way point you to who you will wind up with. (Sounds like Cosmo questionnaires except with pictures.)

“No matter what you do you’re going to wind up with him.” She points to a picture at the bottom of the page. “Not anymore. I tried the homosexual thing, but I forgot to use the magnifying glass by Gary’s bed like you told me to. It was so small it scared me away from ever trying THAT again.” Ha. Ha. A line he would have preferred to use with Gary there, but . . .

After a brief discussion of sports and dating, Mark poses the question, “What does a girl mean when she tells you she’s ‘sort of’ seeing someone?” Well I must say, I’ve been married my entire adult life and have never been a party girl or a bar-hopper, so I couldn’t say. Mark also says women lie more than men do. I don’t know if that’s true, but we do respond differently. I would be less blunt than a guy, listening to my mother’s voice in my head saying ‘Kim, be polite.’ So where a woman might not think it’s polite to say, ‘I honestly have no interest in seeing you ever again’ she might let him call and be conveniently unavailable every time he calls. On the other hand, guys might say ‘I’ll call you’ when they mean ‘if figure skating is on every channel, the bars are all closed and everyone I’ve ever met is unavailable, I’ll call you.’

A woman might pretend to like basketball, when what she really likes is spending time with the guy. Once they are married and she gets to spend more than enough time with him, she won’t have any reason to watch basketball anymore. The reverse is that a guy might go shoe-shopping with a girlfriend, but if he goes with his wife, he’s either whipped or has a secret longing to slip his feet into 4-inch stilettos.

Of course, I actually like it that men say what they think, except when it’s my husband saying he doesn’t think I’m dressed properly for an evening out, or that he’s mad that I spent too much money. But he doesn’t think I give him a straight answer when he asks my opinion. That polite girl-thing that isn’t supposed to hurt anyone’s feelings gets in the way. Instead of saying, “no, I don’t think we should do that” I might say “I’m not really keen on that idea, though it would probably work just fine.” Drives him crazy.

Of course, the safest thing to say is, ‘whatever you decide will be fine, honey’ and you know what? It almost always is. The little stuff we get our shorts in a wad about are usually so trivial they don’t matter the next hour, much less the next week, or month, or year.

Diner’s Closed.

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