lemon man

So Dad & I went out to this dark, oddly cavernous all-you-can-eat buffet place, decorated with about fifty Norman Rockwell posters (Dad's favorite at left) and half-full of a lot of very tired, worn-out, used-up looking people—mostly whitish senior citizens in pairs and threes, and 3-generation Mexican families. At least the kids running around made things a bit more cheerful, and the food actually wasn't bad.

Dad had a mountain of carrot-raisin salad and some potato skins (just the skins; he seemed to think they were fried plantains like at the Peruvian restaurant).

Behind Dad, I watched an older man bring a plate of lemon wedges to a table—just lemon wedges.

No, I mean a LOT of lemon wedges.



Well, not that many. But a lot.

Wha...? I thought to myself.

But I was distracted for a while because "Time After Time" (the original version—the soundtrack for me sobbing my way through high school, don't we all have a song like that?) began playing amid the soft pop medley that is endemic to such places, and Dad was sitting there with food all over his mouth, smiling sort of hopefully, and I almost started bawling right there. Damn you, Cyndi Lauper, I will always have to remember that awful goddamn moment whenever I hear that awful, goddamn song.*

Fortunately, this little moment was in turn interrupted when I noticed that the man behind Dad was not, in fact, having a lunch solely composed of lemon wedges. He had crammed them all into a glass of iced tea.

Although there was not much room for tea, it actually looked pretty good. But the whole thing struck me as very funny. Perhaps it was only funny in comparison to the whole ridiculously maudlin Cyndi Lauper thing. But I made a mental note to share it with you.

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*Actually I like the song, but I don't think I should admit to it.