This past weekend I took my former friends to what is quite possibly the sketchiest Chinese buffet that has ever existed. I say former because all 3 of them have decided that it is in their best interest to no longer be friends with me after the events of this meal.
Granted, when I awoke that morning (okay, afternoon) with a craving for Chinese buffet food, it's safe to say there were no true standards to speak of. I would argue that in the genre of Chinese buffets, this one was just par for the course. But my former friends would tell a different tale and it would sound something like this...
We first realized things were amiss when we noticed the display of jeweled hair clips and bedazzled bracelets by the cash register. How bad is the restaurant industry faring that they have to resort to a side hustle of glittery accessories to make ends meet? Fortunately for this buffet, our next best option for Chinese cuisine was located next to a cat hospital in Durham. None of us had a particular taste for chicken chow meow, so we had to stick it out here. We waited to be seated and bravely approached the buffet.
Some of the key items on the buffet table included Chinese staples like egg rolls, brown rice, french fries, sesame chicken, lo mein and macaroni and cheese. One of the more notable buffet items was what appeared to be a spinach and cheese dish curiously labelled "garlic bread". Manning the buffet tables was a woman yelling into a walkie talkie with what we could only assume was food needed, although I picked through the same pathetic display of sweet and sour chicken on 3 different attempts at the buffet, so who really knows?
Our cheapness beat out our common sense as we all decided it was necessary to attempt dessert in order to get our money's worth. I selected a cream puff, cheesecake square, Jell-O and orange slices. The cream puff had a texture that can only be described as lacquered, I couldn't even bring myself to take a bite of it. It felt like a fake dessert used for kitchen displays in Ikea. The Jell-O was also surprisingly difficult to bite into. I thoroughly enjoyed the orange slices. Solid citrus selection. But the real jewel of the dessert buffet was an ice cream cooler similar to what you would find at an ice-cream shop, with 8 different flavors that you could scoop yourself. The fact that I got to scoop it myself made it about 1000x cooler because I have the maturity level of a 3 year old. I was tempted to just hang out there for the evening and offer to scoop everyone's ice cream. I have long prided myself on my scooping abilities but that's a story for another day, and likely another audience.
Now it is important that you all understand that the ending to this story is 100% true, and in no way made up. I am reporting the facts, exactly as they happened. Prepare yourselves, I'll wait.
The waitress left our check and fortune cookies on the table. Our table of 4 was given 3 fortune cookies, and one fortune cookie wrapper full of nothing but air. Not a cookie sans fortune...a bag of air. You really can't make up stuff like this.
All things considered...that meal was still only the 2nd most tragic thing to happen to me last weekend.
Picture it. I'm sitting in my apartment, just studying away as per every Sunday afternoon (aka watching Law & Order: SVU), when I realize I need to eat supper. Due to a combination of various outside factors (I'm poor and lazy), my only real option is McDonald's (located approximately 2 stores down from the Chinese buffet...#foreshadowing). I decide that I don't need to take my phone since I'm only driving 5 minutes away to a drive through and coming right back. I think we can all see where this is headed.
Imagine my sheer horror when my car completely dies and I pull over on the side of a major highway just blankly staring and wondering what my possible next moves are as smoke rolls out from under my hood and I realize that I can't even crank my car to put my windows up so the carbon monoxide might kill me before the nocturnal predators if I don't act fast.
I contemplate walking back home but I thankfully recognize that my house is a lot farther away than I am currently imagining. Next I consider walking up to a person or a house, but I soon discover that is not an option as I am not wearing a bra. Honestly, it's a miracle I was even wearing pants. Had I been stranded in no bra and no pants, I would still be in that car on the side of 15-501 in Durham, resigned to die, welcoming death's clutches as they wrenched me from this miserable world.
Just when I think all hope is lost and I will die in the Kia that has been unreliably ruining my life for years, I spot a gathering of cars across the road. Upon further investigation, I realize it's a church and start making my way across the highway. This took so much longer than it should have because although a police car had passed me in my pitiful state earlier without stopping to help, I have a very real fear of being arrested for jaywalking because as you have likely surmised from this post so far, there are certain elements of bad luck and poor timing that seem to only happen to me.
After I rather stealthily made my way across 15-501, I tried the front doors of the church and found them locked. Now I hesitate to say that I broke into this church, but I did actively scan the perimeter for security breaches and eventually found a way in. I saw and heard no one as I skulked around. I finally discovered where everyone was. There was a wedding happening at that very moment. Not only am I possibly breaking and entering and trespassing (not to mention the earlier jaywalking offense) but now I am wedding crashing. What a day.
I tried to talk to the
priest? pastor? preacher? reverend? whatever Lutherans call it, he was
wearing robes, but he ignored me. He gave me a mere nod and walked away, didn't
even try to lead me to the Lord or anything.I decided it was in my best interest to just go ahead and use their phone because it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission, what would Jesus do, all that good stuff. I reminded myself of those points as the operator informed me I was making a long distance phone call and charges may apply. After dialing all the phone numbers I knew by heart (911, 877-CASHNOW, 867-5309) I finally got my grandpa on the phone. This is where I realized that I would definitely survive so the story kind of goes downhill from here.
In any event, I lived to blog another day.
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