The unfortunate incident at the smorgasbord.
Would you rather eat at a smorgasbord or buffet?
I already know the answer because you are smart, handsome, debonair and don’t wipe your nose on the sleeve of your shirt, unless, you know, it’s required.
You would rather have the smorgasbord because, well, it just sounds better. It sounds more filling. Just saying the word makes you feel like you have already eaten.
Say it out loud with me now….. SMA MORE GUS BOARD. Don’t you feel better? (Ignore the other people looking at you. Whada they know?)
We don’t have smorgasbords hereabouts where I live. Instead we have buffet’s. Unfortunately no one pronounces the word correctly. It is BUFF EHTS. But people say, BUFF AAA. How did they get pronunciation to of those letters? I always say BUFF EHTS, and of course people look at me like I’m stupid. But as you may have guessed: I’m used to that.
So recently there was an unfortunate event during one of my visits to the local smorgasbord in a nearby town. I was “tout seul”, which is a term well known to anyone who says BUFF AAA because it is French for, I went by myself.
I got may plate and followed through the line like a good boy, spooning out heaping mounds of comfort food. Then I plopped down on a chair and began to eat.
While I was eating a whole passel of older ladies with gray and blue hair and red hats clambered off a bus and pitched and rolled into line. It would have been mildly entertaining except I was concerned and obsessed with thoughts of how I was going to go back for “seconds”.
“Going back for seconds” is an American pastime. It is a part of the fabric of who we are as a people. It is required if you want to vote in the next election. In fact it may be the only requirement to vote in the next election.
As you know when you get seconds you don’t return to the end of the line you go to that one thing that represents your “seconds”. You don’t need all the other stuff… like salad (which is a waste of time).
Everyone knows this, that you don’t go to the end of the line when you go back for seconds. It is common knowledge. Well, maybe you didn’t know this, but everyone else knows this which is why we (we being all civilized persons) can say it is common knowledge.
Maybe the old ladies with blue hair and red hats didn’t know this. Some of them may have been school teachers or cafeteria ladies and they became uproarious when someone - as they put it - cut the line. They got mean. Unruly. Riotous. Disorderly.
Some were going on loudly about detention.
It was unfortunate the some of these ladies fell down among the chaos as I was “getting seconds”.
Bedlam ensued.
Their walker thingies with the yellow tennis balls on the ends were unstable and trying to handle them and a plate of food was too much for these red-hatted women.
Actually, in retrospect, I’m sure I had nothing to do with these unfortunate events and was merely a very proximate bystander. In fact, I was the victim here of a gang of oddly dressed females and their imprinted fixation on rules and concepts of orderly lines which comes from their obsession for control, stemming from years in elementary school with children over which they ruled as dictators. (I shouda been a psychologist.)
There was no concern that some of them spilled perfectly good pudding on the carpet as they unsuccessfully tried to balance themselves, their walkers and their food.
Shouts of “Oh! my hip!” were a bit dramatic and needless.
As I was leaving there was an ambulance arriving. I think they were there for the smorgasbord. They were hungry and running their lights to beat the crowd.
I think bus loads of older ladies in red hats should not be allowed into the BUFF EHTS.
And they should make everyone call them smorgasbord (them being the buffets not the old ladies).
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Postscript
The above is fiction. Apparently there is some misunderstanding among people who read what I write that my writing is“for real”. Fiction means it is NOT real. Did not happen. So please don’t make remarks in email or in comments as though this is real and happened. I don’t really know how better to help you understand. It is Fiction.
©David L Arment
March 2024