Friday, November 18, 2005

Rainbow Ejection.

Yesterday afternoon I went to the "Chick Pea" for lunch, even though I had, while in Greece, sworn off souvlaki as a sign of solidarity towards my lovely wife.

In Greece, they only eat souvlaki. Nothing else.
Well. . .maybe goats tails--but nothing else.

I broke our unified front against souvlaki, sure, but that's between her and I and no one else.

Sitting near me were two gentlemen, both whom I had stood behind in line. One had never had souvlaki before, and the other one had appointed himself as "expert" on the subject of Greek cuisine. The "expert", E, quickly exhausted his knowledge of Greek food when faced with a barrage of questions from the Greek virgin (ooooh! Naughty!). V pointed at nearly everything in the joint, asking "What's that?" or "What's this?"; E didn't have all the answers, though wouldn't admit it, and began giving vague responses that trailed off--I think he was hoping that a server might interrupt him with a sharp, "Lettuce? Hot sauce?" and put an end to the field trip lecture.

They both ended up, seemingly by accident, getting Chicken Souvlaki Deluxe, which so far as I could tell, was no different from my Regular Chicken Souvlaki. Apart from the price, that is. I think the owners bump annoying customers up to "Deluxe" as some sort of tax for being a pain while in line.

The big Greek V, right before my very eyes, sneezed after taking two bites of his Deluxe. It was an open-mouthed sneeze that carried tzatziki, lettuce, tomato, red onion, parsley, chicken, hot sauce, pickled turnip, and pita five feet from where he was seated. What a show! All the colours of the rainbow; but unlike a rainbow, which is fleeting, these colours stuck to the floor and chair which represented, for lack of a more romantic description, "The End of the Rainbow".

E- "That's happened to me before. The hot sauce."

And then it was back to the business of eating.
No "Excuse me!"
No effort to clean up the mess.
Just more face filling.

Classy.
Just like the kid who pukes out the bus window on field trips.

2 comments:

B said...

It sounds gross, but one has to admire his projection.

B said...

You chose to ignore it?

You must have gone through a 'kind, gentle, respectful' stage in life.

Is that how you would react now? I wonder.
(reads slowly over the "Jamie Lee Curtis scream" option)