The View

On this fine summer day, my family and I decided to eat at this place called Santa Fe Steakhouse. We took our seats, and found that the light emitting through the window shades was blinding our eyes and cooking us like an easy bake oven. So, we closed the shades. It was when we found that the window next to those shades was also blinding us that the conflict began....

"That light is way too bright, ask those people if we could close the shades." My mom asked.

My dad obliged, "Excuse me ma'am, but do you mind if we close those shades? The light is in our eyes." he asked the blond woman and her elderly mom.

To me, it was one of those questions to which there was only one answer. Kind of like, 'excuse me ma'am, you're standing on my foot. I know you don't realize it, but that is why I am informing you. Could you kindly remove it, or move slightly to the left?'

This question was more or less a question like 'excuse me ma'am, but the light protruding from the window nearest you is blinding my wife and children. I'd rather them not have to learn braille, so I was wondering if you could allow us to close the blinds? Only at your utmost convenience...'

So, I was really quite surprised when the heavyset middle aged blond woman answered, "Well we like to look outside."

It wasn't just her answer that made me mad, it was the way she said it. 'How dare you ask me such a thing?' She seemed to say, 'this is my view, I very much enjoy it, and you want me to just give it up for nothing?! The answer is no, bitch.'

You would think we were sitting in a Parisian cafe, not an Oklahoma steakhouse, and we had just asked to close the blinds to a window with a view to the Eiffel Tower. What did she think she would be missing out there?? There can't be anything that good to be worth blinding the people sitting behind you, can there? I don't know, you be the judge, here's a picture I snapped of the glorious view that these women might have missed had they closed the shades:



I don't know, maybe it's beautiful in its own way.

So naturally, after that, we started nitpicking on Barb's every move. We found out her name was Barb after we saw her crawl into her Nissan with a vanity license plate. It's actually the same Nissan pictured above. I guess when you think about it, she was obstructing her own view with her car... but anyway. From there, she became Barb The Biznatch, or Bitchy Barb. She also had a sidekick that I nicknamed Gruesome Granny.

I named her thus because a waiter started cleaning a table next to her, and was almost done when G.G. said: "Sir, sir, sir, you missed something sir!" She said this with a kind of disproportionate urgency. The kind you might expect if you were trying to yell at someone that they've forgotten their child on the train platform as they tragically chug out of view to flee the Nazis, their arms outstretched trying to grab the child as she runs along.

The waiter looks around the table then gives her a look that asks, 'what?!'
"Sir you missed something!" G.G. reiterates, this time with more urgency.
The man looks down and takes a napkin off the chair. "There you go." She says, content.
Then the man gives Gruesome Granny a smiling look that says 'thanks bitch, I almost missed it.'
Now we knew where Bitchy Barb gets all her bitchyness.

On the bright side though, we got to talk to our waiter. A dance instructor who, though he refused to do a back flip in the middle of the restaurant, talked to my sister about her high school dance team and was very personable. He gave us free dessert at the end, it does pay to be nice. Then I thought about how for every cranky, annoying person you meet... there's always another nice one.