Dining with Abe Froman

A friend gave my the misses and I a gift certificate to a fancy restaurant a while back.

It was to a nice place... not "black tie" or even "jacket required"-type nice, but the kind of place where the waiter unfolds your napkin for you and refills your water glass every time you take a sip. For reference, the entrees were in the $35-50 range.

This is not the kind of place where I tend to feel comfortable. For my birthday last year, I asked to go to BW3 and Coldstone Creamery. Let's be honest... I'm not a complicated guy. However, I'm civilized enough to know which fork goes with which course and able to act like I'm not wildly uncomfortable in that situation.

Some of the other people there, however, were not. These are people wearing expensive suits and big-ass diamonds... the kind of people who were eating a $150 dinner on a Wednesday night because it was a Wednesday night and not because someone gave them a gift certificate.

The people next to us managed to walk into the restaurant loud and drunk, and get progressively louder and drunker as the meal passed. At one point the woman's cellphone rang and I shot the misses a "how can this lady not know to turn off the ringer on her phone" look.

Then, the woman answered it. Then, the woman started having a loud conversation with whoever was on the other end of the line about the meal. And soon... she was passing the phone around the table so other people could talk about what they were eating.

Like I said... I'm not the most complicated person in the world, but it's nice to know that one has the ability to act like you belong somewhere more than some rich assholes.