Down in front!

After church Sunday, my good friends Vic and Sarah Garcia (photo of Vic above) took Natasha and I out for lunch at Cheddar's, a local casual dining place. The lunch crowd was pretty heavy, and we had to wait 30-40 minutes for a table. We had our hands full keeping my kids entertained and well-behaved while waiting, so we were thankful when 2-3 seats at the rather crowded bar area finally opened up for us to at least let our kids sit down (they like the cool high bar seats) and for us to order a drink. There weren't enough seats for us all and Natasha and I were standing behind our kids in the seats to watch them and keep them still.

As the bartender is making our ritas, a guy seated behind me at a booth waiting to get his food order asks me if I would move so he can see the TV playing a college basketball (think it was an ACC conf tourney game) game. I was a bit taken aback because I thought it was pretty clear that because I was with my kids that I could NOT move! There was definitely not another place all 6 of us could move to in the bar area. Furthermore, this overall bar area had like 4-5 TVs that this guy could have easily gotten up and moved to to watch the game if it was that important.

Anyway, I told him, "No, I can't move because I need to stay here with my kids and friends," the guy's wife huffs and says, "Uh, rude!". I wasn't really angry until she said that. I got pretty pissed at him and moved over and got in their faces (maybe 3-4 feet away) and said, "Look, sir, if YOU want to watch my kids I'll send 'em right over and then I'll move. But we're waiting for a table and waiting for the bartender to make our drinks. I will MOVE when they have our table ready and they call our name." He didn't say anything else after that. Like George in Seinfeld, I later thought of many more witty things to say (...the JERK store called and they're running out of YOU!).

My wife thought perhaps I was a little too aggressive with him, but I felt I did pretty good not to drop a bunch of f-bombs on his head and toss him through the window. Later after we got seated the manager came over and apologized to us. She and the bartender at least confirmed that the other guy was in the wrong on the issue. Vic had the best line of the entire day when he said with a straight face to the manager, "Man, it's those CHURCH people coming in here on Sundays!" to which the manager gave him a high-five.

The restaurant itself turned out to be pretty good and we had a great time and wonderful visit other than that incident. The frozen ritas we ordered for about $7 were easily twice the size of a frozen rita at most places, and not diluted! I think maybe the barkeep felt sorry for us after that incident and maybe put in a couple of extra floater shots or something! The food was also very good and they gave us large portions.

Oh, I just learned that I have the wrong photo. My bad! Corrected photo of Vic below (on left), along with good friend Kevin Aymat who passed away last year (to whom this blog is partly dedicated).