"I didn't know *Side-Street Pizza* was your favorite place to eat," Joan said, perusing the menu (Names of restaurants have been changed to prevent the blog-writer from being sued). "It's not," Sydney answered, "It's Mom's favorite place...she loves their raspberry wings." Joan glared at me so I ordered her a hard root beer ale to soften her mood. "This would be much better with ice cream," I said after taking a sip. I asked our waiter for a tall glass with vanilla ice cream. "We don't serve ice cream here," he answered. I was confused. "But," I stammered, pointing to the fifty flavors of milkshakes offered on the menu, "clearly you do." He carefully explained to the woman-in-the-booth-on-the-edge-with-her-face-coated-in-raspberry-wing-sauce that they only have ice cream for making shakes. I looked at Joan for help but she was still packing a grudge.
Our friend and school librarian (the two are so often interchangeable, aren't they?), Amy White arrived, offering Sydney a beautifully-wrapped present with, get this, a homemade bow. "My grandma had a bow maker," Amy explained as she ordered a water with lemon. "We don't have lemon," the waiter said. "How about some unsweetened iced tea," Mrs. White asked. "Sweetened?," our waiter replied. "Just water," Amy said. "Ice?" he asked. "Only if you have it," my librarian quipped. Later, he brought us our pizza and inadvertently took away Amy's water so she and Syd were champs and shared. I, of course, was still livid about my ice cream and Joan was still steamed that I took Syd to my favorite restaurant on her birthday. Mrs. White was just glad to have water.
From there, we trooped over to "The We're Going To Replace Star Wars With The Raunchiest Movie On The Planet" theater (Names of movie theaters have been changed to prevent the blog-writer from being sued). We decided to watch "Slightly-Disheveled Grandma" (Names of movies have been changed to prevent the blog-writer from being sued). "I would NEVER have imagined that I would be spending my twentieth birthday watching filth with my school librarian," Sydney reflected later. The opening scene of the film had me remarking to the six people in the theater, "I can feel my IQ lowering." We sat in stunned silence throughout the next two hours, searching for redeeming value. "There seems to be a noted lack of character development," I whispered to Joan at one point. It was, after all, suppose to be a movie about the grandparent/grandchild relationship--where the elder passes along some wisdom. "My grandmother gave me a bow-maker," Mrs. White remarked as the credits rolled and we darted out of the darkened theater hoping no one would recognize us.
We concluded our evening at "More-Bang-For-Your-Buck" Coffee (Names of coffee places have been changed to prevent the blog-writer from being sued) where Mrs. White flooded our table with her extra order of whipped cream. We struggled to clear our now filth-coated minds with enlightening conversation. Is a banana a berry? Since a strawberry is actually not classified as a berry, should we lobby to have the name changed to straw-fruit? Where were the Monkees going on that last train? Clarksdale? Clarkson? Clarksville? But in the end, one thought remained. The Monkees were headed to Clarksville but Sydney wasn't headed for Honduras. Instead, she was stuck with us...going to her mother's favorite restaurant, watching a naughty movie with old(er) people, and then having to pay for our coffee before going home. Happy Birthday, Syd!
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