Friday, April 1, 2011

my favorite kind of lunch

After a long morning spent with your mom or your friend doing errands or shopping or something, you find a place to get lunch that doesn’t look at all remarkable from the outside. It’s one of those places with a person’s name in its name (“Andy’s Deli,” “Helen’s Mediterranean Cuisine”), a buffet-style station characterized mainly by steam, lighting that recalls a hospital hallway...

But from the second you walk inside, a particular kind of fatigue-fueled, punch-drunk hyperbole kicks in.

“Oh, this place is so cute!”
“Can you believe how much stuff they have on this sandwich menu? Seriously, look at it.”
“They have egg salad, too?! Are you kidding me?!”

The charade lasts for the entirety of the meal, chowed down in the nondescript seating area. “I would come to this place every day if I lived near here,” your mom might say. “Ohmigod, I almost want to ask them if I can just buy a jar of this honey mustard,” you might exclaim. The cashier says you get a pickle with your meal and you both audibly cheer.

Both of you are aware that you’re being sort of disingenuous, that there’s some sort of hard-to-qualify “joke” going on here, but there’s something about the repartee that seems familiar and makes you feel close with the person, so you keep it up until you leave the deli, almost certainly never to return again.

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