Ex-Tabula Rasa

Someone having a discussion at another desk nearby just said “Phenomenal” and I instinctively went “Du dooooo dududu”

TT

You ever have a thing where all your friends recommend a restaurant to you and they tell you it’s not just good, it’s the best restaurant they’ve ever eaten at, the steak is sublime, the desserts decadent, the cocktail menu comprehensive and the sommelier practically a mind-reader in his wine recommendations? You HAVE to go there, it’s the best meal you’ll have ever eaten, it will change your life.

So you go and you eat at the restaurant and the food isn’t bad. Not outstanding, but good. You’d go again. Not the next day, but some time.

But your friends, confused at how you didn’t have a life-changing spontaneous orgasm when the first mouthfuls of foie gras passed your lips, insist that there must have been a problem with the restaurant that night because it’s the best restaurant in the world and my god their loins moisten just thinking about it.

So you go again and you find the food to be not bad again.

Then the restaurant debuts a new Summer Menu and all your friends are raving about the new summer menu and the chick peas! Oh GOD THE CHICK PEAS and you can’t have a conversation with your friend without someone mentioning the restaurant and you give it another try and it’s still okay, it’s good, it’s tasty, but you can’t understand why it’s the be-all and end-all of food.

And the problem is that every time your friends (and now, later, your family) go on about the restaurant (OH SHIT THE FALL MENU HAS COUSCOUS) you start to wonder if there’s something actually wrong with you, why aren’t you enjoying this food as much as everyone else? Are you taste buds faulty?

But no, they can’t be, you made that dinner for them a few weeks ago and everyone really liked it, they had seconds and everything. And any other time they recommend stuff to you, it’s usually exactly as they say it is. It’s just in this one specific case you’re out of touch with everyone.

And remember, you don’t dislike the place, you enjoyed your meal, you just didn’t black out and hallucinate that you were zooming through the vast reaches of your own mind when you ate the Steak Tartare. But each time you hear someone talk about this restaurant and how utterly amazing it is you’re pushed further and further into a seething bucket of resentment that whatever it is about this restaurant people like, you seem unable to get. You’re the last person not laughing at the joke and you hate it. You start to hate it. You start to actively rankle at each time someone mentions they went to the restaurant because you feel like they’re in on some joke that everyone else is actively excluding you from. You’ve gone from mild enjoyment to complete animosity and it’s not the restaurant’s fault, it’s not your friends’ fault, it’s your own fault because your brain can’t cope with being out of whack with what seems like the rest of the planet.

So you try to avoid all mention of the restaurant (let’s say for the sake of argument, the restaurant was founded by an American music video producer, a German b-movie director and a Dancing With the Stars dancer-turned-actress, and is called Hype, Boll and a Hough). But then it releases a new menu and you start going crazy again and you want to move to a new city.

Do you ever get that?

You know, you may scoff at this, but despite what people say

Working full time, studying the equivalent of a full-time course and raising a ten-month-old really isn’t much of a walk in the park.

I am a goat

In a moat

With a boat

My Saturday

Awake and up since teething baby woke up at 5:45? Check.

A grand total of an hour and fifteen minutes of naps from teething baby? Check.

Teething baby being extra clingy to her Daddy? Check.

Daddy welcoming baby’s clingyness because he misses her during the working week and he has two accounting case study essays to write before Wednesday and he’s putting them off? Check.

And that’s why I’m spending my Saturday night writing about the liquidity ratios of imaginary Ontarian furniture suppliers while my wife drinks beer and plays Japanese RPGs in the next room.

Scene: My wife kisses our baby as she lies on a bed

Audrey: Giggles

My wife: Laughs

Audrey: Laughs

Me: Laughs

Audrey: Laughs

My wife: Laughs

Audrey: Laughs

Me: Laughs

My wife: What are we laughing at?

Audrey: Pause

Me: Pause

Audrey: Giggle and fart at the same time

Me and my wife: Sudden hysterical laughter at giggletoot

Audrey: Pause

Audrey: Shocked sobbing