Dinner and Unintentional Entertainment

As you can probably tell by my sporadic posting, I am on vacation with the fam. One of the beautiful things about having older kids is when you have just about had enough “quality family time” you and the EC can declare it “Date Night” and leave them to their own devices. Tonight those devices consisted of RedBox and Mac n’ Cheese. I imagine they are as glad to get a break from us as we are from them.

So we went out to dinner, just the two of us, to a nice Mexican restaurant that we have loved for years. We were seated in a quiet corner of the patio, away from the masses. Perfect. The strolling Mariachi band even found us and played us a romantic song. It felt like it should have been for a special occasion. My EC was particularly lovely, laughed at my jokes, and only ate about half her food. Perfect. I was able to enjoy mine, and also her leftovers – after I reassured her there was no point in taking what little was left back to the four boys to fight over.

It was already quite late, and the place had cleared out a lot while we were dining. After we finished, our waitress had vanished – we figured that she had forgotten about us. We weren’t bothered, and enjoyed the quiet time to talk. Eventually she came back, took our dessert order, brought us soda refills, and left us alone again.

Somewhere in between the main course and dessert I realized that there was a closed circuit camera system watching over the patio – and us. I became immediately concerned about what was going on on the other end of the video feed. (Translated to English for your convenience)

Hey Manuel – look at this – that guy at table 17 finished his chimichanga already!
No way- it’s too big – I just took it out to him.
It’s true. He finished it – ate all the frijoles too. Hey Pablo, come look at this…
What? I’m busy…
Check this guy out. He means business.
What? Do you want to bet on this guy?
Yeah.
OK. Five bucks says he takes his wife’s plate and finishes it too.
You’re on for five bucks!
No, I think he’ll just reach over and eat off her plate. I’m not betting.
Hah! Told you he’d take the whole plate. You owe me five bucks.
Wait – wait. Maria is going back. Who wants to bet on dessert?
Ten dollars says he gets dessert.
I’m in!
No way he has room for dessert. You are on for ten bucks.
Nope, no dessert. He just asked for another refill.
That’s his third. He’s going to be up all night.
Wait..wait..he’s calling her back…Dessert!

All right you guys – quit watching the camera and get back to work.

(Five minutes later)
Psst, Manuel. The wife ate two bites of the deep fried ice cream, and he finished it off.
All of it?
Even the fried tortilla.
I hate that guy. He cost me $15. He better leave a good tip.

(I did leave a good tip.)