Friday, March 6, 2009

"Oops," I said, unnecessarily.


Please picture the following:

I, Mike, and Danfriend are at Chick-fil-A about half an hour before closing.  I order a kid's meal (6 piece nuggets, if you must know) and Mike gets a chocolate shake.  I wait with the tray for Dan, while Mike goes and sits down in a booth with some bud-buds.  When Dan is ready, I pick up the tray and attempt to walk to the booth, but the way is blocked by "Caution: Wet Floor" signs. There is a woman mopping the floor.

I attempt to walk around the signs, and she says: "This section is closed!"

Okay, I think, and I attempt to go the long way around, only to find that my way is blocked on that side by a row of chairs.  As I try and squeeze through them, the woman says again, "This section is closed!  I've already cleaned it... I don't want to have to clean it again."

"No problem," I say.  "I'm just going through to sit with my friends."  I gesture to where Mike and the buds are sitting, in a section still populated by diners.  Exasperated, she agrees, and I continue through the closed section, heading toward the booth of friendly faces.

Halfway through the clean section, I swivel to maneuver around a table and feel an odd weight shift on the tray I carry.  I look down just in time to see Mike's untouched chocolate milkshake topple off the tray and explode on the freshly-mopped floor, splattering the tables, chairs, and walls of the area that, if it's not too much trouble, the cleaning lady would really rather I avoid.

There is a painful silence as every head turns toward the explosion.  The woman hasn't figured out yet what's happened, being on the other side of a partition mopping another area.  She knows something is up, but she's not yet sure what, as I stand helpless in the middle of the restaurant, milkshake dripping from my jeans onto the floor. 

Silence, and then a precocious young lad rushes to the scene from his family's booth to stand, hands on hips, and shout: "Clean up on aisle seven!!"

It was one of the most perfectly constructed moments of my life, and I thought I would share it with you.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

my favorite part was the look of quiet desperation/murder on her face when she saw what had happened.

Also, not laughing uproariously throughout the entire incident was one of the more difficult things i've had to do lately.

Mitsuoh said...

not laughing uproariously while reading the entire incident was equally difficult.

"just so" moment.