Eating Broccoli with a Straw

Continuing from the December 31, 2024 edition.

Then, a waitress came up to us and said, “Y’all need a place to sit?”

(Uh, that would be a “yes.”)

“We’re full in here, but if you’ll follow me, I’ll show you where you can sit.”

Like little ducklings in a row, we followed her—through the dining room, past the buffet, into and through the kitchen, through the storage area where giant cans of green beans and fifty-pound bags of sugar and flour rested on metal shelves, into a narrow hallway, then through a door that took us right back outside.

By that time, I felt more like a rat in a maze than a duckling, but there was no turning back now because I was super curious where in the world she was taking us.

Stopping in front of another door, she pulled out a wad of keys and sifted through them. “This room might be a little big,” she said as she inserted the key in the lock, “but it’ll be like your own private dining area.”

I promise you when she opened the door there was the same kind of sound you hear on movies when archeologists open a crypt. It was like air was being sucked into the empty chamber.

My wife, ever the observant one, whispered, “This doesn’t seem right.”

No argument from me on that one, but my stomach was growling. Hunger always overrides reason.

We all walked into a room that was approximately forty feet long and twenty feet wide with a couple of eight-foot folding tables surrounded by metal folding chairs.

“Is this all right?” the waitress asked.

Roger and I looked at our wives with our eyebrows raised, wanting them to make the decision so if things turned out badly, we could blame them.

Laura and Brenda looked at each other, shrugged, and laughed.

“Sure,” they said.

We moved to sit down at the bare tables.

The waitress took our drink orders. As she headed out the door, she said, “If y’all want to go ahead and hit the buffet, I’ll bring your drinks out here. Just go back the way we came.”

It was all so weird it became funny. Laughing and joking with each other, we headed back through the storage room where this time I noticed the biggest mouse traps I’d ever seen sitting on the floor, through the kitchen where this time the cooks smiled and waved, and into the crowd at the buffet.

Everything smelled delicious.

Here comes the important word—BUT.

It smelled delicious, but I didn’t recognize a single thing. Large spoon handles stuck out at odd angles from different color containers of food. Some containers were different shades of green, a couple were shades of yellow, one was light brown, one was dark brown. But the contents were all runny and soupy, like they’d been run through a blender.

I looked around at the local citizenry to see if they were as befuddled as me, but they were all smiles. Some were with their elderly mom or dad, helping them with their plates.

The only thing I saw that I recognized was rolls. But I was hungry, so I got a spoonful of green, a spoonful of yellow, and two spoonfuls of the light brown, plus four rolls.

Once we had helped our plates, it was back through the kitchen where we were greeted like old friends, through the storage room, the hallway, back outside, down the sidewalk and into our private dining room.

Our waitress had done just as she promised. All our drinks were there.

Time for another BUT.

But, we didn’t have any silverware.

Roger volunteered to traverse our well-worn path and retrieve some cutlery. I suggested he just bring everybody a spoon or maybe a straw.

As far as our waitress went, evidently we were “out of sight, out of mind” because she never came back to check on us and never brought us checks for our meals.

If I remember correctly, none of us went back for seconds. I do remember eating all four of my rolls.

When we finished slurping our meal, Roger and I found our way to the cash register to pay.

A pleasant, maternal looking woman never asked us for a check, she simply asked how many people ate.

I dreaded her asking, “How was your meal?” because I couldn’t find the right words to accurately describe the experience. But she did ask the question. So, I said, “Everything seemed to be a little runny.”

“I know,” she said with a sigh, “that’s just the way our residents like it.”

Frowning and wrinkling my forehead, I replied, “Residents?”

A confused expression crossed her face. “Yeah, the people who live here. Who are you here to visit?”

Let me cut to the chase. It turned out someone had bought the motel and restaurant and turned it into a nursing home.

* Taken from The Wit and Wisdom of David Johnson, Volume 1: I Didn’t Know Donkeys Could Laugh.