A Night Out With Friends

You may recall my entry from a couple of weeks ago about the Chinese men. After we visited with them at the restaurant, we decided to take a class trip to their restaurant. Tom (the one who spoke English) is scheduled to go back to China this week, so we wanted to wish him a farewell. Twenty of us made the journey from our respective towns to the Chinese place. This sounds easy enough, but let me just tell you - getting twenty people to the same place at the same time proved to be quite the challenge. I was driving our crew. Roommate, Daughter, Depot Son and Daughter-n-law in tow, we were headed for some good Chinese food. We assumed the restaurant would be fairly easy to find because we were told "it was in front of the hospital." Finding the hospital would be no big deal. How many Chinese buffets could be "right in front" of the hospital? Ha. We turned off the main highway towards the hospital that we were the most familiar with. There were many restaurants around, but "right in front" of it was a river - not a Chinese restaurant. I drove a little further trying to find someplace to turn around. Meanwhile Husband and Wife are in the back seat having it out. There was a certain level of frustration from all of us about not having clear directions. Husband and Wife were taking this out on each other. We were calling the other cars seeking help, but they knew less than we did. Husband was convinced that the place we were looking for was on the main highway in an old Quincy's building, but that would go against the "right in front of the hospital" theory. Right? Wrong. We managed to make it back to the highway, found the old Quincy's building, and sure enough it was a Chinese place. But was it the right one? We pulled in the parking lot and someone from our vehicle (we were fighting out who exactly that would be) was going in to ask if this was the place where Tom worked. Wouldn't you know it... while we were circling through the parking lot, we saw another hospital on a side road behind the restaurant. Who would've thought? While in the parking lot, we could see Tom through the window and figured we were at the right place. Then we saw the Thursday night men and their two carloads of people. We called the other car and told them we had found the right place. Finally. We didn't go in until everyone was present and accounted for. This was a problem because some of us were in desperate need of the restroom and there we were - so close yet so far away. The drama between the Husband and Wife in our vehicle only escalated and resulted in the Husband spending the rest of the night outside in the car. Roommate went outside to tell him what a bloo-hah he was being, but he didn't care. We carried on without him. The tensions eased once we were seated. We were given the V.I.P. treatment b/c one of the Thursday night men knows Tom, the manger, and the lady that owns the place. Pans of fresh crab legs, fried shrimp, and the most delicious boiled shrimp were brought to our tables. The food was good and the company was better. We took pictures with Tom and his Chinese friend (the one who doesn't speak English). Chinese friend apparently has some sort of crush on a married member of our gang. It was funny to watch. While we were taking pictures, he was crying. It was so sad. Later, he kept hugging the one certain person, and she didn't know quite how to handle it. While we were leaving, he followed her out the door. She practically ran across the parking lot to where we were. And there he stood at the door watching her. The Thursday night man explained that it is a Chinese custom of respect that they stand outside the door and watch you until you leave the restaurant. After his two carloads left, the two Chinese people - the one who spoke no English and the owner - went back inside. I guess they had more respect for him than they did for us. Probably because he paid for everyone's dinner. Or maybe because they realized how much we all like to talk and feared they would be standing there for a long time. Either way.
It was a fun night. Now, we laugh about the drama of finding the place. When we arrived that night, one of the men asked me "So you got lost?" My answer was a good one. "No, we weren't lost. We just didn't know where we were going." I was thinking... that's kind of deep. I mean, the whole time we knew where we were, so technically we weren't lost. But we didn't know where we were going, so we weren't going to know if we made it to the right place. Put that one into metaphoric perspective - it's profound.

So here's the funniest "funny" of the weekend: Sunday night after church, I went to Cousin's house to play cards. Her daughter and her son both had friends over to spend the night. We were sitting at the kitchen table playing cards when Daughter and friend came in to pop some popcorn. The popcorn was finished and they were grabbing the spray butter out of the fridge. Apparently, it wasn't spraying correctly and Daughter was getting frustrated. She said, "Hey. Something is wrong with the nostril on this bottle!"