Olive Garden grows a lot of characters

Yesterday Mom and the sister and I went to lunch at Olive Garden in Albuquerque. We met lots of amusing people.

First there was the little bitty girl in the doorway, waiting to be seated. She had lots of dark wavy hair, fixed pretty, and she could just barely toddle. We walked in and also waited to be seated, and she looked up at us with these huge dark eyes and played with the zipper on her jacket.

Then there was the little bitty girl in the booth next to ours. She played peek-a-boo with me for a long time. A really long time. First she stood on the ground and looked around the corner at me, and then her mother hauled her up into the booth and she looked over the divider at me and played with the potted plant and started saying, “HI! BYE!”

But she didn’t make nearly as much noise as the two birthday parties. They were havin’ some serious fun. The waiters, in proper waiterish fashion, congregated around each table and sang an edition of “Happy Birthday.” The Olive Garden song is to the same tune as the VeggieTales silly song about the giant squash who squashed his chocolates and his nice silk hat real flat.

And there was our waiter, Will. Will had some serious flirtage happening. Mostly he flirted with Emily, but it overflowed to me too, and this in front of Mama. (To his credit, he was nice to Mama.) We ordered. He told the soror she couldn’t have raspberry lemonade. The soror made otter eyes at him and he relented.

He would just drop by the table merely to see if we needed anything.

Emily finished off her breadsticks and just sort of poked the basket at him, and he read her mind and brought her more, teasing continuously.

He came and cleared things away—I told him he could have my salad plate, so he took it, and he tried to take Em’s soup, and she wouldn’t let him. She gave that little exasperated, “Aw!” that she does, and he went, “Do you always yell at people like that?”

He left and came back and then she said he could have it, and he picked up her spoon and poked around in it and demanded to know what she’d eaten. Em told him. He didn’t believe her. She said, “There goes your tip!” He smiled and said, “I got a tip?” She relented and said, “Well, you did bring me breadsticks.”

He wandered off and came back and asked if we were sisters. We said yes. He asked who was older. We smiled and said, “Guess.” (We’re so mean.) He looked helplessly confused for a while and finally guessed wrong. So the next question was how old we were. Major déjà vu!

I said, “That’s a deep dark secret.”

Emily said, “A gentleman never asks a lady her age.”

Will said, “Why not? The times, they are a-changing.” (That was definitely a more socially-ept response than, “My bad,” if less endearing to a lit major.)

I said, “Some things never change.” (Mwa-ha-ha!)

Will asked me, “Are you thirty-five?” (Yipes.)

Emily, without missing a beat, said, “No, she’s fifty-seven.” He tried to get off the backhoe at that point.

Will dealt with the check and to-go boxes, gave us a charming smile, and said, “You need to come back and see me. My name’s Will, but if you forget it’s okay.”