Tales From Trussville

Friday-Just because Anita Morris is your waitress doesn’t mean you’ll get good service

Got home Friday all pumped up to get the grass cut because there was nothing but rain predicted for the weekend and if I didn’t get it done, it would be another week of growth, at which point it would be up to the eaves. Was met by wife and Precious Moments-eyed son and Tobey Maguire-fanatic daughters who had other ideas, namely of going to go see Spiderman. “But, if I don’t get it cut I’ll have…to…and…but…::sigh::…What time does it start?” Yea! Dad’s a hero!

We get there and the entire teenage population of Trussville has shown up. And purchased all the tickets. None available. Hmm, Dad’s a flawed hero, unable to use his superpowers to obtain magical slips of paper which will allow us to gain entrance to the darkened room packed with pimple-faced boys trying to make out with their spandex-clad female companions. “Well, I guess we can go get something to eat.” And since the same Bennigan’s I talked about last week is right there in the same parking lot, guess where we decided to go.

Walk in and joy of joys, we get a table right away, and, the red-headed Anita Morris look-alike girl was our waitress! Hot-diggety! We got our drinks, put in our order, and were then abandoned for 45 minutes. No bread, one refill of one kid drink, no “sorry it’s taking so long,” nothing. I finally managed to tackle her and ask what the holdup was. “Uh, well, it’s on its way, but the kitchen is slow tonight, and, uh, there’s this party of like twenty and, uh, it’ll be right out pretty soon.” Talk about being able to dance! I’ve never worked in a restaurant, but I know each of these excuses are part of the standard employee training lecture given on Day One—Subject-“It’s Friday and We Only Have One Cook and He’s Very Angry.”

But, at least we weren’t as bad off as another set of folks who were sitting down when we came in. Our food FINALLY got out (and half of the orders were no longer hot), and these poor folks had STILL not been served. Reba and I watched as they got the manager over—it was loud in the restaurant, and they were at the other end of the row of booths, but you could tell exactly what he was telling the manager. “Look, we’ve been here over an hour—they’ve got their food, they’ve got their food, and those people with the four kids have their food and they came in after US!” The manager had his back to us, but by his open-armed shrugging motions, you could tell he was saying, “Gee, we are so sorry, it is just very busy tonight. Your food IS on the way—the kitchen is behind a bit tonight, and we’ve just had this very large party of about seventy people who came in.” In his mind, I’m sure the manager was thinking, “Gosh, I hope they don’t think I’m going to comp them an appetizer. Who do they think they are? It’s not like they sign my check or anything.” Anyway, lots more arm-waving by management and exasperated customer anger, and finally, everyone at the booth got up and left without their food. I was surprised, but they did give their server a tip. After this, the manager disappeared.

Our waitress checked back once to see if we needed anything. Nope, I think I’ve had all I can stand. We got our check, paid and left. On the way out, I was made to feel soooo much better by the incredibly loud host screaming at the back of my head that he hoped we all had a great time and would come back soon. Uh-huh.

Saturday—You ever do something that seemed like a good idea at the time, but you’re sort of ashamed of how it turned out, but not really ashamed enough to be considered a good person?

Ahhhhhh, six a.m. Saturday and all I could hear was rain. Semi-sleep during rain. Ahhhhh. I knew Little Boy would be rained out of his soccer game, but we still had that nine-o’clock tournament game for Middle Girl. But, it’s raining, so just maybe I don’t have anything to worry about. Doze until seven o’clock, and I call and get confirmation that the Trussville fields are definitely closed. One down, one to go—I finally get Girl’s coach on the phone—“Yeah, as far as I know, it’s still on.” ::sigh:: Get her up, get her dressed, and notice that the rain has stopped. Well, maybe I can do some yard work afterwards. I decide that we will take the truck, and I will maybe stop at the nursery and pick up some shrubberies for the ni-sayers. Drive 25 miles to Shelby County, expecting to get there and have to turn around, because, well, it’s been raining forever. Pull into the parking lot, which is packed with kids and cars. Oh, well, this promises to be a mess. And it was, they played Homewood, the same team they had played in regular play last week, and got a dose of little girl vengeance. It was hard play, mainly because the ball would only go a foot or two before bogging down in the muck. They weren’t used to that, so they left behind a lot of balls. Of course, it was an advantage for us on one shot when they kicked and the ball stuck in a big puddle of water right in front of the goal. But, we still lost. Oh well. “Okay, our next game is at 1:45 at Alabaster, change to your red shorts, see you there.” Crap, crap, CRAP! Too much time left to stay here, not enough to do anything once we get home except eat a sandwich, then turn back around and drive 35 miles to the other park. So, we went home to eat. Stopped by the nursery, no shrubs. This was getting to be a bit annoying. Made even more so by the fact that we would be playing another team from TRUSSVILLE! Well, you see, our fields were closed and the ones at Alabaster were the only available. It’s my fault. I wished for ours to be closed and this is what I got.

We ate, she changed, then back on the truck for the ride once more across two counties. A very long trip, made even longer by the fact that the instructions on how to get to the park were incorrect. To say I was frustrated would be to understate it just a bit.

We finally get to the park, with some time to spare, thankfully. We saw a couple of our parents with their car and van parked on either side of a nice parking space close to the picnic pavilion where some other folks were having lunch. I backed up a bit and started turning into the space. The two sets of parents were sitting there watching me trying to enter the space and their kids were slinging doors open and chatting and staring at me and running in front of me. Now, even though I have superpowers, I know my truck is not invisible—it’s more like I’m driving a big green barn. And it’s not quiet—not obnoxious, but definitely audible in its truckish way. So I sat there, and more kids decided to pile out as their parents continued to go about their trunk-unloading, child-ignoring exercises. A brother of one girl stood there in the space tossing his baseball up in the air as he stared at me.

I decided to make my presence known to these children—just a gentle notification in order to ease them out of my parking space.

(See, the problem was that these kids don’t have me for a father. If they did, they would have been cowering in their vehicles when I first showed up. My kids know that while dad’s fuse is exceedingly long, it does have an end connected to a very large stupid area in his brain, so the results of allowing the fuse to burn are highly unpredictable.)

My solution was not to tap gently on the horn, because that was a little too loud. I figured that I would race the engine a bit, which, if done correctly, is not too loud, and doesn’t have the gritty, urban, horn-blowing edge to it. Just a little nudge on the gas pedal should do it.

Which is what I say in retrospect.

At the time, though, I was actually having a High and Righteous Redneck Coot moment, and had also forgotten that a long trip in the truck means the exhaust manifold is red hot, and that doesn’t mix well with an engine that needed a valve job eons ago. Because, you see, leaky valves allow a right nice sized portion of raw gas to escape into the red hot exhaust system, which means that when you want to nudge the gas pedal just a bit, and then you decide a big nudge will do even better than a small nudge, that you and everyone around discover that gasoline, air, and red hot metal produce something like rmrmrmrm-rum-rum-RUM-RUM-RUMMMMM-WHUMPPOWWWWW!!!!.

On the one hand, I did get my parking space. On the other hand, people thought the Iraqis had invaded. I had quickly try to cover my error in judgment using the Pee Wee Herman “I Meant To Do That” ploy, which I think worked pretty well, in that the law was not summoned and I was just given mean looks rather than being shouted at.

I am very ashamed.

But at least now everyone else’s children know not to get in Mr. Oglesby’s way while he is driving. I guess call it a wash.

Oh—the game? We played a younger group of Trussville girls from the “A” division. We got beaten. Badly. “Next game, tomorrow at twelve, at home.” Let’s see: church gets out at eleven, it takes thirty minutes to get from church to the park, we’re supposed to be at the field thirty minutes ahead of the game…yep, that means Girl will have to change from church clothes to soccer uniform on the way, in the van. ::sigh::

But, at least Saturday did dry out enough to allow me to run the goat over the yard, and trim the bushes.

Sunday—There is no such thing as a home field advantage

I had to fill in for an absent teacher Sunday morning—teaching a lesson from I Corinthians about marriage to 8th and 9th graders—so I was WIDE awake. Nothing like trying to teach a group of hormone-drunk teenagers to keep their hands off each other without a) saying something they will misinterpret and go tell their parents I said, or b) not saying something they needed to have heard, and then they go out and do things only later to say, “Gee, Terry didn’t say I shouldn’t have done that!” I think I know why the regular teacher decided not to show.

After church, it was the mad dash to the field, with Rebecca gallantly changing clothes in the back. Luckily, we have tinted windows, and no sense of shame or modesty, so this was accomplished relatively easily. Of course, we were the only ones in church clothes, which I was kind of surprised about, seeing as how there are a couple of families on our team who first complained loudly that we needed to play in tournaments, then complained loudly on Saturday when they found out we had a game Sunday. Lots of “I have a f-ing class, how the hell am I supposed to get here on time!?” and “Who the f- decided we should play on a church day!?” Oh well. This one we played Mountain Brook, who only had eight girls, and therefore no substitutes. They beat us senseless, too.

But, Rebecca got a nice tournament patch, and didn’t seem overly upset about all the losses, because she played well.

Practice again tonight for her and Boy. And one afternoon this week, we WILL go see Spidey!
posted by Terry at 11:46:00 AM