A dream of a friend.

Last month my one professor friend who studies (modern) (Czech) literature texted me about a dream she had --

I dreamt i had to tell you i was running late because i was helping a male stripper who had melted his penis tip by swing [sic] it around candle flames...but I'd be there soon

 -- and I texted --

Was that what really happened, or an excuse you made up

 -- and she texted --

Not made up. Really delayed me trying to fix things

. . .

Pickle juice.

I've been on a bit of a pickle kick lately, and I always have a big jar of pickles sitting out in the corner of my refrigerator, but then there's the question of what you do with all of the juice that's left over when you're done eating all of the pickles.

I had been sipping it whenever I felt like I needed some salt, but then I had a bright idea and added it in to a soup that I had made with a little onion and chunks of potatoes and then kale, as like a sourer and a salterer agent!

It's almost like a (Romanian) ciorba, a traditional sour soup that you can make with sauerkraut juice and whatnot.

The taste isn't quite the same, and it's not like there's good bacteria in corporate pickle juice, but it's not bad and it sure is environmentally neurotic, and so I'm a fan.

Odd customer interaction.

The other week at the (Thai) restaurant, this table of two (white) women came in very late in the afternoon, one woman round and with frizzy hair and vaguely (Native American) patterned clothing, and the other thin and drawn in a (purple) sweater and with a distinctly confused look on her face.

My coworker handled the order, but then later they called me over, and they asked me if there was any other type of sauce for the spring rolls, and the thin woman had a few pills out on the table and kept stammering, and she kept mentioning something about how she was "sensitive" to peanut sauce, and I said that I didn't know of any other sauce that people used with them, but then I listed some sauces like egg roll sauce and sweet-and-sour sauce, and I offered to get them for her, but she said she was "sensitive," and she kept pointing to the top of the spring rolls where bits of peanut were visible, and so I offered to take them back and get them off her bill.

"What happened," my one (Thai) (newlywed) coworker asked when I came back, and I told her, and she said that the woman put the sauce on top of the spring rolls like that herself, it doesn't come like that, and then she asked what she had said exactly, and I kind of repeated, but then I just said that she just seemed confused, and she even had some pills out on the table.

And, she said that she must be, since she asked about the spring rolls, and she told her what they were, and that they came with peanut sauce.

Later, after she interacted with the table more, she told me that that woman did seem very confused.

Then, finally, on the way out, as the two women were leaving and I said bye pleasantly, the thin woman tried to apologize as she left, but she couldn't get the words out, and all of a sudden it clicked for me that she must have had a stroke and it had affected her linguistic capacity, and that she talked like one patient who had had that who I knew back briefly when I worked at that one retirement village.

And, I told my coworker that.

"I bet when you said the word 'peanut,' she heard it, but she couldn't process it cognitively," I was like. "She must have had a stroke, I bet that was it."

Those women tipped like 20%, by the way.

"Box."

One of my biggest surprises from working at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now is just how many times a day that I find myself saying the word "box."

"Can I get you a box?", I'm like, or someone is like, "Excuse me, I need a box," or it's like I just come up to a table and I'm like, "Hmmm, seems like you guys need a small box," and I say it all with this tone and it's all like you guys needing a small box.

Honestly, it makes me feel like some kind of weird f*cking pimp. 

Sometimes when I talk to customers and we start saying the word "box" a lot, it's like I start having an out-of-body experience and my conciousness is standing three feet away from us looking at us go on and on and on back-and-forth just talking about boxes.

It's weird.

Customer chit-chat.

At the (Thai) restaurant, spiciness is on a scale of zero to four, and fours never get ordered, let alone the secret scale beyond that, where we have eight (the scale actually jumps from four to eight).

The other week, though, this one (placid) (middle-aged) (white) couple actually ordered both of their meals with fours, and I also brought out the "side spices" of dry chili flakes and the chili paste for the guy to maybe use with his order, which he did.

And, when they ordered, I told them that they were rare in how much spiciness they liked, and we talked about it for a little bit, not least because when I read back their order to them, I made sure to double-check that they wanted "the maximum four on a scale of zero-to-four" for their dishes that they were ordering.

Anyhow, they were a good table, and when I was getting them to-go boxes etc. and asking them if they needed anything else, I was like, "Do you need a bag for the boxes?", and when they said no, they were fine, I was like, "Okay, would you like a portable IV so you can mainline chili paste into your veins?"

And, they liked that, and the guy was like, "I wish."

Language games.

 

So, it turns out that Wikipedia says that one of the (indigenous) languages that a lot of the (Guatemalan) back-of-the-house staff speaks developed tones, unlike some of the other neighboring related languages and unlike how they think the mother language functioned.

So, I was telling this to my one (Thai) (newlywed) coworker, and I suggested an experiment:

The next time one of the guys who spoke that language came out of the kitchen for something, we should have him start counting and recite numbers for her.

And, we did that, and she could totally hear the tones.

And, I asked, and she says that when Americans count in English, there's no tones, in comparison, you can just hear the difference.

One time after that, too, I asked a guy how you say "Buenos dias, senor" in his language, and when he told me, she said she could hear the tones in that, too.

Bartender marriage.

Down at the local brewery, the one cooler college-age woman with Goth-ish tendencies is marrying her boyfriend coming up, and they're also going to have a kid.

"How long have you been dating him?", I was like.

"A couple of years," she was like,"And I've known him forever before that."

"That's solid," I was like. "That's totally enough time to make sure he's not a serial killer with a storage locker somewhere that he's keeping from you."

"Oh no, he would never do something like that!", she was like. "He's too lazy."

(And, she meant it.) 

She also said that she's getting married at this one historic church that's actually near my house, and I was like, "No way!", and I told her that it was so close that I could probably slingshot rice over from my place.