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"When writing the story of your life, don't let anyone else hold the pen"
Warren Zevon
Breakfast was a weekend thing for Mary and me, at least until the whole era of weight loss began. Though we still get up early on occasion, and still eat too much for fun, it’s now more disciplined – we’ve become warriors of the chronically hungry, we are fighting for our fitness. It’s like being in a church built for a cold and withholding god, or just a regular church with bad wafers and cloistered people telling you how to live.
With the season changing to sweater weather and an easier
way to hide the fat, it is even more of a treat to eat breakfast out – and the
cold firms you up and reduces the jiggles when you walk back to the car of
shame and go home.
Los Gatos Café is a favorite -- the potatoes are to die for,
the bacon crisp, and they offer a bakery item with every meal. The seating is
tight, lots of people have disposable income, kids, and the wish to be served
by others – it’s Los Gatos.
We arrive and are seated next to a standard four-person
family. I immediately notice the boy opening a plastic baggie of mushrooms and then
dumping them on the table. The boy is young and looks it. The mushrooms are
dried and stringy – I know exactly what they are.
The mom and dad are talking to each other and the sister is
reading a Harry Potter library book. They arrived before us but have ordered
and are awaiting their food. I’m amused, but jaded, and look down to my menu
out of habit, I already know what I’m getting – if I was Schrödinger’s cat, I’d
be dead, and you’d know it. I’ve become predictable, my growth rings are
static.
I order, then look back to the table with the boy – the plastic
bag is still there, but now he is playing with miniature star war figures. There is no sign that the mushrooms were ever
there.
As my meal arrives, I glance back at the table several
times, but nothing changes. Everyone in the room is acting out their own
behaviors as I watch -- the eaters eat, the standers wait, the full of food ask
what tip to leave from their spouses. Nothing changes, not the speed of time and
not the clarity of the room – It just is as it always is – the only variable is
me, and I think – when I’m gone, will anything ever move again?
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