Monday.....Miscellaneous.....Day At The Olive Garden

How do you handle an inebriated octogenarian at the Olive Garden on a Saturday afternoon? My wife and I took my mother, who is 84 years old, out for lunch this past Saturday. We were going to make an afternoon out of it so they both ordered fancy wine drinks. I've told you about my mother before. She bore, in her younger days, a striking resemblance, in both looks and personality to Lucy Ricardo. She was also very artistic, once coming in second place in a nationwide Alcoa contest for designing an insulated blanket for automobile engines. I walked into the apartment one day as a child, to see her sawing our couch in two. Remarkably, she sewed the ragged ends together to make very nice seats. You do have to know how to interpret her train of thought, for instance, she gave me a shirt that she had ordered from B. B. King; which I believe can be correctly interpreted as L. L. Bean. She was an accomplished painter in oils. Today, somewhere under 100 lbs. and with a half a glass of 50% wine & 50% ginger ale in her, she was having a good time. Her main worry in life for that few hours anyway was having her dentures fall into the chicken scampi. My wife was having a good time also. As for me...well let me put it this way. At one time, I would have liked to have been an actor but didn't have the courage to even try out for a school play. I did take an acting course at Pitt and my assignment was snippets from the character Paul Bratter in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park. If you are not familiar with the play or film, Jane Fonda plays a young newlywed who craves excitement in everything, but her lawyer husband Paul is ultra reserved. The character's personality fit me to a tee. At the Olive Garden, I reacted as Paul Bratter would as Jane and Charles Boyer were popping rather than nibbling their knichi to the center of the tongue to get the benefit of the entire palate. My son's Father's Day gift to me was a framed picture of he and I, chosen because it is the only known picture of me in existence where my teeth are showing in a smile. After a very enjoyable lunch, we stopped at my second home, Barnes & Noble. My mother was not going home without Glenn Beck's new book Common Sense which we found, though she was a little disappointed that it did not have any pictures as she talks incessantly about how cute he is (He looks like a blond Larry Mondello to me.) The fun wasn't over as she kept announcing how good she was feeling lately. There was though, a touch of embarrassment, I am constantly grieved at the lack of decorum in public places and here she yelled across the aisle to me the title of a book she had just picked up...Bull#&%$. I do believe that a stronger drink...on occasion...is good for you. I'll occasionally forsake Diet Coke for regular Coke. It was a nice day and I thank God for times like that. My mother only spilled her wine once, we didn't get thrown out of Barnes & Noble for profanity and I even got a new shirt out of the deal.