Sunday, March 11, 2012

A Table for Four

A few years ago, Elaine and I took a short trip to Las Vegas.  We stayed downtown, not on the Strip.  I don’t know if it was the time of year or where we stayed, or what, but there were crowds of people everywhere.  Long lines were ubiquitous.   One morning we walked out of the hotel hoping to find somewhere we could get in for breakfast.  We didn’t want to eat at the hotel, but we were definitely hungry.  We walked around for about fifteen minutes, and then we sighted a casino that advertised a restaurant in the basement.  We thought it was worth a try and went inside, but, no real surprise to us, there was a line of about a hundred people, mostly couples, and a few groups of three or four.   We sighed to ourselves and took our place at the back of the line.  It continued to grow behind us, and it was moving slowly. 

After a little while, the hostess called out that she had a table for four available.  I instantly turned around to the couple behind us and asked, “Say, would y’all like to have breakfast with us?”  They were a little surprised, but nonetheless replied in the affirmative without delay, so I held up my hand and called out to the hostess that we were a party of four. 

You cannot imagine the indignation of several people in the line, when the hostess signaled for us to come on up.  Someone cried out, “They weren’t together!  They don’t even know each other.”  Another yelled, “Hey, that’s not fair!”  And so on, the rumbling continued, but the hostess just smiled at them and said something like we looked like a foursome to her.  She took us right on in and seated us at a nicely located table.  I could swear that, as we were leaving the line to go eat, I heard someone else yell, “New foursome here!”  (Ah, ha!)

We and our new companions introduced ourselves to each other and began talking just as easy as pie.  We ordered our food, which turned out to be very tasty by the way, and we had a very satisfying conversation with this couple.  I am ashamed to say that we have forgotten their names, but I do remember that they lived in Waxahachie, Texas.  We had some fun laughing at the people who complained.