The Mad Dash, Part I

Act I, Scene I

Setting: Chicago. R + J are at Giordano’s, a popular local pizza chain. They have almost three hours to eat lunch, gather luggage from a hotel a few blocks away, travel one mile to the Amtrak station, pick up tickets, and get on a train.

Waiter: Are you ready to order?
R: I’ll have personal pizza X.
J: I’ll have pasta Y, and we’ll have Appetizer Z.
W: Soup or salad with the pasta?
J: Salad.

Approximately 47 years pass, while R + J try to remember what people do in restaurants, aside from talk (since, after all, that can be done anywhere). Tap dance? Look up random subjects on iPhones? It certainly can’t involve eating food, though the chosen activity of the customers at other tables challenges this hypothesis. Finally, W places four dinner-sized plates on the table, then returns.

W: Here’s the appetizer. (Makes a rapid exit.)
J: (To R.) Please. Have a large plate.
R: Thanks! I’m so glad we don’t have appetizer-sized plates. They would take up so little room on the table.
J: Yeah, that waiter is really on top of our spatial needs.

Ten minutes pass.

W: (Bearing an entree and a side salad, each complete with its own plate.) Here you go. (Disappears with an almost audible whoosh.)
J: I vaguely remember restaurant etiquette dictating that salad should be presented before all of the entrees are served.
R: I don’t really remember. I lost so many brain cells after that earlier period of starvation that I’m lost on that subject.
J: (A few minutes later.) Hmm, this plastic cup of salad dressing is leaking a bit.
R: You could put it on one of the extraneous dinner plates.
J: Hey, good idea. (Places tiny cup of dressing on enormous dinner plate.)

Ten minutes pass.

J: (To waiter.) Excuse me. How long do you think the pasta will take? We have a train to catch.
W: They’re working on it.

Ten minutes pass.

W: (Presenting the entree, complete with its own plate). Here’s the pasta.
J: Fabulous!

J eats her pasta. R checks the time.

R: It’s 3:20! Our train leaves in 45 minutes!
J: (After a quick mental calculation determining that this may not be enough time to traipse through holiday shoppers, pick up bags, and get through holiday traffic en route to the station, frantically waves to the waiter.)WE NEED OUR CHECK RIGHT NOW PLEEEEASE!!!

R + J pay the bill and dash out of Giordano’s.

To be continued …

Comments (1)

Filed under Anecdotes, Theatre of the Absurd

1 Response So Far
  1. 1

    dr said,

    January 8, 2008 @ 1:25 pm

    For about three quarters of the way through this entry I was consumed with one question: Who is this ‘J’ that Janna is dining with.

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