Restaurant Stories

 

 

Some very interesting things can take place in a restaurant if you walk in with a cane, a dog, or taking someone’s arm who is leading you.  My friend Margaret and I used to visit restaurants all over Raleigh, almost everywhere in North Carolina, and even made just a few dents in some in Tennessee and New Mexico.  

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It was a Friday night and we were visiting a crowded seafood restaurant.  I had a guide dog, a real clue that I was an independent, yet blind person, which to some people would immediately indicate needing lots of help.  The waitress was wonderful, only her degree of helpfulness was almost overkill.  She took my hand and touched the glass of tea, spread my napkin in my lap, went around the plate with my hand on the edge telling me where everything was, and then put my fork in my hand.

“Now are you all right?”   She asked.

“I definitely am just fine,” I answered, probably in a tone that indicated irritability. 

Finally she walked away.

“She may as well have just fed me,” I said to Margaret, as I reached for my glass of tea. I picked it up and put my lips around the straw … only to fine the little short paper covering the straw opening.

“Maybe she needs to,” Margaret said between her laughing.  I hope this is not one of those “guess you had to be there” stories, because it entertained Margaret and me for days and restaurants to come.

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Margaret and I were eating at a restaurant with steps.  Holly, my guidedog, did a good job of getting me up the steps, and I knew she would stop and lower her head when we left upstairs to indicate we had reached the steps once more.  Finally our meal was over and we were headed out.  Holly stopped and lowered her head, at which point I took a step down.  There was no step down, only a large  fry no longer on the floor, and I had entertained the entire section of the restaurant with my version of dancing.  Holly was never a scrounger dog in public until she tasted fries, and those are the only things she would dive for.  From then on we had to be extra careful in restaurants where there were children in high chairs or sometimes adults who might accidentally drop a fry.

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Margaret and I were at the beach, eating in a very upscale restaurant.  I decided to order a glass of wine with my dinner.  The glass was over half way gone.

“Do you think the waiter would give me just half a glass of wine?” I said to Margaret.

She took a rather long look at my glass.

“With or without the fly,” she answered. 

I didn’t want any more wine.

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At Burger King once Margaret was with me, Holly, and my three very young grandchildren.  It was quite a feat just getting through the line with the children, not to add a blind lady with a dog.  The cashier handed Margaret my change instead of me, even though I was standing there with my hand out, feeling like an idiot.  We sat down and one of the children decided they wanted a frozen Snickers bar for dessert.  Margaret and I went to the front to get three desserts.  This time when I paid for the food I said:  “And please put the change in my hand this time.”  

After that every time someone reached out to hand Margaret my change she gave them a dirty look and stepped behind me.  She probably thought it was hard enough to look after three pre-schoolers, and then her friend embarrassed her, but she totally understood and was the most wonderful friend ever!

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It was my first Sunday being invited to lunch with some church friends.  They let me be as independent as I needed to be and I did appreciate that, but was nervous, wondering what I might do to embarrass either them or myself.  We were at a restaurant called “Hot Spots,” and I ordered a bowl of chili and a glass of tea, hoping I wouldn’t drop chili all over my church clothes.  I should have taken a hint by the name of the restaurant that the chili was going to be hot, but there I was, determined not to ask the waitress to please take it back.  I just decided to wash it down with the tea.  It took me several glasses of tea to put out the fire, and I wondered why the lady beside me stopped talking.  Finally, someone told me.  It seems that every time I finished my tea I had reached over and picked up her glass.  I kept thinking the waiter filled up my glass and moved it, so I had reached until I found one. 

Yes, they still invited me to go out the next Sunday, and I did, just to show them I could behave.  I truly appreciated it when someone made a joke and said:  Everybody hold on to your tea now.”

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I may have already blogged this story, but will go for it one more time.  I had been shopping close to the Golden Corral when it was new in Raleigh.  I had pretty good vision then and had no hesitation about going in alone and making myself a salad.  I was feeling good about being so independent until I found myself sprawled on top of a display of fall pumpkins decorating the Corral.  For some reason this was so funny to me even then that when someone came to help me up I just went right on and made my salad, laughing all the time.  I was trying to picture people eating in there and seeing a lady just fall on top of those pumpkins as though she had intended to, laughing while they came unstacked and probably a few rolled.  I do hope they did not burst.

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This one wasn’t entirely my fault.  I had taken Brittany, my granddaughter who was about eighteen months old into a little ice cream shop in the neighborhood.  Margaret joined us.  I let Brittany get down while Margaret and I were talking.  Suddenly Brittany screamed.  She had stuck her head through the designs in the back of my chair and it would not come out.  She was so panicked we thought we might have to call the fire department, but knowing what went in surely would come out kept us working until her little head slipped back through the way she had gotten it in there.   

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This little story comes straight out of a book I am working on, and is totally true.  It happened back in the day, probably about 1959.  I was at school at the NC State School for the Blind in Raleigh.  My friend and I had gone off campus to a little restaurant close by.  The story goes like this:

Laverne and I went to the Bright Spot.  I could not read the jukebox in there and we loved to play songs.  So We just put in our money and hoped for the best.  We were on our way back to our booth when I under estimated how close we were to a man’s table.  Until being introduced to blind barely teens, the man had been quietly enjoying his newspaper while he ate his dinner.  However, I managed to under estimate his table just right so as to run Laverne into the corner, causing his plate to take a nose dive for the floor and his drink close behind.  As newspaper, food, plate and drink raced toward the floor in all directions he frantically grabbed for whatever if anything he could catch.  Like the giggling girls we were we truly tried not to think it was funny, but when you are fourteen going on fourteen everything is funny unless it isn’t, then it’s a tragedy.  Well, the man’s tragedy and our fun never mixed.  Often I have admired the man’s patience as he slowly said in a mumbling not even irritated but very slow tone “Well, I guess I got some—ome-ome-ome  left.”   Laverne and I reached our booth just in time to hear Ernest Tub whine out a country heartbreak dirge that sent our laughter into overtime.  Neither of us thought one bit about how the man perceived blindness, nor how it looked to everyone in the little restaurant to see two blind girls totally out of control in silly-ville.” 

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This is the sweetest restaurant story I know. 

Margaret and I went out to a Raleigh restaurant called Swaines Steak House.  The waitresses there were totally wowed with having a guidedog come in.  One of them was on her knees under the table before I could stop her.

The manager came over and welcomed us and Holly.  It was Holly’s tenth birthday.  She would be retiring very soon.

“Can I please bring her a steak?” he asked. 

This is something I would never agree to, but I thought about Holly’s impending retirement, her birthday, how much I loved her, and thanked him.  

Holly was treated to a fine steak, cut up in small pieces.  Then, as she ate, the piano lady stood up and announced that she was playing a song for Holly and her owner.  She began playing.  Tears came to my eyes as I recognized the song she played for us: …  “You’ll Never Walk alone.”