My wife and I don’t go out to eat all that often. The majority of our dinners are spent sitting on the couch, trying to keep our daughter occupied and watching whatever we recorded on our DVR the night before. We had some family was in town just a few weeks ago. They didn’t enjoy our dinner ritual as much as we do, so we spent a lot of nights eating out. One night in particular, we all went out to the Outback Steakhouse.
Once we were all seated at the table, the waiter came by and took our drink order. I never did catch his name, so for the purposes of this tale, we’ll call him “John”. John started at the other end of the table, and as he spoke, I definitely got the vibe that John may… well… enjoy the company of other men. I wasn’t getting a “Liberace in a sequined jumpsuit” strength vibe… more like a “have you ever noticed that cousin Tom never brings a girl to Thanksgiving dinner” type of feeling. Why do I mention the possible sexuality of our server? It will all become clear pretty soon…
After we all order our drinks, John heads off to get them and put in our spinach and artichoke dip order. I start to look over the menu, and I decide to get a steak. The one I want in particular is called the “Outback Special”, and since I was hungry, I figured I’d get the 12 ounce. I closed my menu and started up a conversation with my father.
John came back and started to take our order. When it was my turn to order, I loudly proclaimed “Yes, I’d like your 12 inch special.” Oh yeah… Freud would have been proud.
I tried my best to play it off by saying “That was silly… I mean the 12 OUNCE special…”, but there’s really no recovering from something like that. I made eye contact with my wife, who, God bless her, was doing her best to maintain her composure. I refused to turn around and make eye contact with John… I just quietly closed my menu and passed it over my shoulder to him. Luckily the rest of my family was either too preoccupied or too innocent to realize what I had just said…