All You Can Eat

All you can eat. Four simple words. Fighting words really. It's a personal challenge between the restaurant owner and yourself. There can only be one winner. The restaurant is banking on the fact that you cannot eat full value of what they're charging you to eat 'all you can eat'. On your end of things, you want to make the owner pay for what he's done. Make him regret his decision of deciding to offer an 'all you can eat' menu in the first place. It's really a challenge to your man hood. Not only do you want to get equal value for the amount you pay, but you want aim to eat him into the poor house. You vow to make him plead for mercy.

Of course, when the process begins, you do feel like you can eat the entire world three times over. You're armed and ready. You brought in loose pants. Belts are entirely optional at this point. You and your friends have starved yourself for an entire day for this event. The craving for nourishment in your body simply cannot be contained a moment longer. You place your initial order. The amount of food your group orders frightens the waitress. She questions whether or not you can finish what you ordered. She politely informs the group that you must pay extra for any leftover items. Your group reaffirms her that it is not a problem. We know the rules of the game already. No drinks, because it takes up valuable stomach space. You proceed to finish your first order and polish it with 'blitzkrieg' like efficiency. The Germans would be so proud. The second order comes. No problem. Third one comes and goes, and there are visible signs of degradation, but as soldiers, you march on. We were heavy hitters after all. The fourth order rolls out, and then it begins.

This is the portion of 'all you can eat' in what I like to call the 'blame game'. You realize at this point of the dinner that you've over ordered. Any excess food left over food on the table means that you would have to pay extra. That would mean the house wins. It's against your ethics to let that happen. "Over my dead body" you'd say. So the finger pointing starts to happen on who should finish what they ordered. The conversations are usually variants of the following quotes. "You ordered this, so you should eat it." "I ordered it for you guys", or "I didn't tell you to order that, I don't even like tuna" and finally "I didn't order that!" You get the idea.

After the minor blame game, and challenging each other to 'man up' and finish the left over items, everything is quiet. Everyone at the table has the glaze in their eyes. The digesting glaze. The leave me alone or I will puke on you look. Then the jokes starts flying around the table. You plead to your buddies to stop making you laugh because you're so close to puking. Any semblance of laughter will upset the space/time continuum within your body. You can feel the food rising up and down your esophagus with every breath you take. It's almost painful.

If you puke, you know you will never hear the end of it from your friends. That's when you know you have some great company amongst you. Some of the best memories have spawned from our many 'all you can eat nights', and I would not trade that for anything in the world.

Actually, that's a lie. I'll trade it for anything worth more than ten dollars.

Coldplay's 'Fix You' has been on my mind so I leave you with this. Take it easy my friends.