Wound up one table over yesterday at lunch from young people who were quite taken with their own extreme coolness. In fairness, I'd like to think when we were that age, we were more circumspect and behaved, but we weren't-our, or my, saving grace was that I was a dork as opposed to a thug.
There's always a concern in fast food places about robberies and people wearing sunglasses and ball caps are regarded with some suspicion. I fully expected to see Ronnie Milsap try to beat the check and dash out to the parking lot with his bag of food where Stevie Wonder was waiting to step on it as his getaway driver.
Phew! Sorry. Must have been overcome by all the naturally occurring glutamate in the fries. Was momentarily light-headed, now I'm permanently so. Seriously, I understand the concern and I also understand when you give impotent people even the smallest and most insignificant piece of power, they'll bludgeon you like a baby seal with it.
Anyway, point made and the Pranksta Gangsta doffs his cap and slips off his shades and pulls his tee-shirt up to just below his nose in a startling homage to Bazooka Joe (without the eye-patch). That I'm the only person in this scarfing establishment, and possibly the hemisphere, who sees this similarity should be more sobering than it is.
Speaking through his shirt, Bazooka Joe orders with meticulous attention to detail, your basic burger and fries lunch (I find it amusing to imagine the person impersonating a grill master knowing what to make of an order of tartare for a hamburger as if that would happen).
The duo behind him, Pesty and Toughie (if you're gonna go Bazooka Joe go all the way, okay?), spend as much time talking to the menu and to one another about the menu as they do to the sartorial sheriff at the register all the while twisting one another's arms behind their backs. The sixteen-year-old equivalent of 'look at me! look at me!'
I am a simple lad who orders simple food and I actually have mine and am seated when theirs is ready and they walk away from the counter. The sole empty table in the entire establishment (seemingly) is next to mine and they mark their territory by having a brief, albeit loud, food fight with french fries (damn glutamate again?).
My theory on their surreptitious outfitting is probably true since I hear one of them suggest they need to hurry up and finish so she can get home because if 'my Mom sees me dressed like this, she'll go crazy.' As if that were all the reason necessary.
-bill kenny
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