Friday, February 22, 2008

hip to be square

As I've discussed previously, restaurants are rife with small, notable awkwardnesses.

One of the more anxiety-inducing is when you walk into a restaurant with just one other person but the hostess directs you to a four-person table with one chair on each of the four sides. The two of you sort of dance around the table for a few seconds, assessing if this other person is someone you want to sit across from or next to.

Something
typically happens during this pre-sitting dance. Maybe one of you will take off your coat and momentarily hold it in an uncomfortable position. Maybe one of you will say something utterly obvious ("So... they gave us a four-person table"). Maybe you will both just gaze silently at the gaudy candle-related centerpiece.

Sometimes, when it's all just too much for me to bear, I will take the plunge and sit down in one of the chairs first, forcing the other person to make the choice (IF IT'S NOT CLEAR BY NOW, Y'ALL: THIS IS A CHOICE ABOUT FRIENDSHIP, NOT CHAIRS!). No matter what the person decides, I make a judgment, of course. If she sits next to me, I'll think to myself, "Oooh, so this is kind of intimate now... the drama of this dinner just got heightened, yo." But, if he sits across from me rather than next to me, I always think to myself, "Ah, so we're that kind of friends, huh?" Physical distance = emotional distance, obvi.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

shouldn't you let the girl sit first? jeez...where are your manners?

Anonymous said...

we want picture

Anonymous said...

You say yo?

Anonymous said...

why do you say obvi? are you a 15 year old girl?