Brighten Your Day

Man I love the Waffle House. Closest one to me is 45 min away, so when I'm road-tripping through the South (as currently), I stop there every morning. This morning I got my usual black coffee, Pecan Waffle and double order of smothered-covered-chunked-scattered. And I don't even eat Waffles, unless it's at the WH. Black coffee is all the breakfast I need. For the record, I am a white-haired man in my 50's.

I ate my meal and was waiting in the smallish line up front to pay. There was a Latino family of three at the booth right to the left of the counter, and the Mom was trying to talk to the Dad while simultaneously getting the 7yo son to eat. She kept stopping her conversation to tell him to eat, and he wasn't having it. The register clerk was overwhelmed and the line was not moving very quickly, so I watched this for a couple minutes.

Feeling a little bit froggy, I plucked a fork out of the cup at the register and slowly made like I was going to pluck something off the 7yo's plate, staring hungrily at his eggs and moving my fork menacingly in that direction. He grew wide-eyed and covered his plate, angrily. His mom saw what i was doing and (thankfully) instead of cussing me out, told her son "That man is going to eat your food if you do not hurry up!!!" He glared at me and immediately circled his arm around his plate and began wolfing his eggs down. I held my fork in 'attack mode' and kept 'looking for an opening into his plate'. As soon as he'd slow down eating, I'd bring my fork closer to his plate and he'd 'circle the wagons' and gobble more eggs. His mom played along, and repeatedly warned her son about me trying to steal his food, so eat it before I can.

By now I was paying for my breakfast and I treated it like a 'distraction to my desire to eat this boys breakfast', swiping my card while waving my fork menacingly. By the time i left, the boy had eat almost all of his breakfast. I shot him an annoyed look, winked at the mother (who nodded and smiled), and walked out of the Waffle House, keeping an eye on the boys plate the whole time.

Arm around his plate, he gave me the stink-eye all the way out the door, but I bet he finished his breakfast.