The following post was written five years ago:
A Day At The Olive Garden
How do you handle an inebriated octogenarian at the Olive Garden on a Saturday afternoon? My wife and I took my mother, who is 84 years old, out for lunch this past Saturday. We were going to make an afternoon out of it so they both ordered fancy wine drinks. I've told you about my mother before. In her younger days she bore a striking resemblance in both looks and personality to Lucy Ricardo. She was also very artistic, once coming in second place in a nationwide Alcoa contest for designing an insulated blanket for automobile engines, and she was an accomplished painter in oils. I walked into the apartment one day as a child to see her sawing our couch in two. Remarkably, she sewed the ragged ends together to make very nice chairs for both sides of an end table. She once super glued her lips together and another time nailed her fingernail to the wall while hanging a picture. You do have to know how to interpret her train of thought though. For instance, she gave me a shirt that day and said she had ordered it from B. B. King; which I believe can be correctly interpreted as L. L. Bean.
Somewhere under 100 lbs. and with a half a glass of 50% wine & 50% ginger ale in her, she was having a real good time. Her main worry in life for that few hours anyway was having her dentures fall into the chicken scampi. My wife was having a good time also but as for me...well let me put it this way. At one time, I would have liked to have been an actor but didn't have the courage to even try out for a school play. I did take an acting course at Pitt and my assignment was snippets from the character Paul Bratter in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park. If you are not familiar with the play or film, Jane Fonda plays a young newlywed who craves excitement in everything, but her lawyer husband Paul is ultra reserved. The character's personality fit me to a tee. At the Olive Garden, I reacted as Paul Bratter did as Jane and Charles Boyer were popping their knichi to the center of their tongue to get the full benefit of the entire palate rather than nibbling it like a civilized person. My son's Father's Day gift was a framed picture of him and me, chosen because it is the only known picture of me in existence where my teeth are showing in a smile.
After a very enjoyable lunch, we stopped at my second home, Barnes & Noble. My mother was not going home without Glenn Beck's new book Common Sense which we found, though she was a little disappointed that it did not have any pictures as she talks incessantly about how cute he is (He looks like a blond Larry Mondello to me.) The fun wasn't over as she kept announcing to everyone how good she was feeling.
There was though, a touch of embarrassment. I am constantly grieved at the lack of decorum in public places and here she yelled across the aisle to me the title of a book she held up for me to see...Hey Special Dog...Bull...#&%. I do believe that a stronger drink...on occasion...is good for you. I'll occasionally forsake Diet Coke for regular Coke. It was a nice day and I thank God for times like that. My mother only spilled her wine once, we didn't get thrown out of Barnes & Noble for profanity and I even got a new shirt out of the deal
