There are few things in my life that are as constant as the North Star (well, at least until Vega takes over in about 13,000 years) and the usual conversation about where to go for dinner after doing a bit of nerding at Best Buy (and entertaining the staff, if we’re really honest about it) is certainly one of the more amusing ones.
“Where do you want to go eat?”
“No idea…I’m just trying to survive this week.”
“What about you, any ideas?”
“It’s not *MY* birthday!”
“You two are usually the more sensitive amongst us…”
“We’ve been behaving this week!”
Until finally we decide to let the Fates guide us in the form of a flipping penny…heads is “Saltgrass” steak house not too far away from where we’re standing, tails is Mexican down the hill much closer to my house.
The gods of the odds decided El Tapatio was the place for us and down the hill we went and I’m thinking my hardest choice is between “Fajitas Guadalajara” (mucho meat and no frijoles!) and “Mar y Tierra” (a massive container of cheese dip with some protein thrown in…not the smartest move for the lactose intolerant but sometimes you’ve just go to go with Miles’ advice)!
Sometimes you gotta say “what the F***”, make your move. Joel, every now and then, saying “what the F***”, brings freedom. Freedom brings opportunity, opportunity makes your future. So your parents are going out of town. You got the place all to yourself.
Miles — “Risky Business”
So imagine our surprise when we roll up to this particular establishment of the Mexican persuasion the queue is running out the door and where we’re definitely in the minority and it’s where the Mexicans like to eat when they go out for Mexican.
I’m pretty sure it’s enshrined in law somewhere that those are the two sure-fire ways of knowing you’ve hit pay dirt…or it could be that’s what I remember from living in San Antonio a few times and we were looking for real Mexican as opposed to Tex-Mex! 🙂
It seemed like every GrubHub, DoorDash, and Uber Eats driver in the city had converged on this one place of Mexican wonderfulness and I really felt for the poor bugger manning the register where this mighty pile of bags of food awaiting delivery drivers is waiting.
If there was anyone that needed hazardous duty pay, it was him!
I don’t even make it in the door and I’m passing the time trying to amuse the crowd which consists of some rather angry sorts who are getting hell through their apps and there’s literally nothing they can do.
After about ten minutes of this and then the final straw is the beleaguered chap offering a table and the people that came in after Mom and Meghann kindly and gracefully bogarting it out from under them, we figured it was time to admit to defeat and we’re going to head back up the hill to Saltgrass where we had started this foodie journey.
Mom decides to ride with me as I’d parked closer in all of the madness but that hardly helped get us up the hill faster because we got blocked in a couple of times by creative and highly illegal parking (probably from the DoorDash lot et al).
I finally get a small clearing and I’m backing the Traverse out of the space and that’s when a revelation hits me that makes me feel like a prize twat for not having ignored the fates and gone to Saltgrass straightaway.
That’s when I share that revelation with Mom who was initially surprised and so it was interrogation time:
“What day is it?”
“Monday!”
“What date?
“The fifth of May!”
“Translate that into Spanish…”
We’re so used to thinking about today being my mother and stepfather’s anniversary that it didn’t even register that trying to get a table at a Mexican restaurant on Cinco de Mayo is absolute lunacy and that my friends is why I felt like a prize twat for not catching it!
King of stupidity, indeed! 😉