BLL Made For A Memorable Meal

Anticipating a week of eating leftover ham and deviled Easter eggs, the family decided a few days before Easter to go out and have a non-holiday fare lunch. So last weekend we gathered at one of our favorite Italian restaurants that so kindly sat us at a nice round table for six. As we all settled in, a nice young waiter came up to our table, introduced himself as Bill, and with an exaggerated flourish, wrote his name on the paper tablecloth with a crayon.

Bill was very nice and took our orders and left us all with our own crayons to continue coloring our table. We immediately noticed that Bill had spelled his name B-L-L. Shaking our heads in sympathy at our phonetically impaired new friend, we continued to demonstrate our artistic skills to each other. My son could write his name upside down. My daughter could draw an Easter bunny. My husband could draw a circle. And as my son continued to draw, the leaf of the table that made a square table round, groaned under the weight of his crayon and his end of the table crunched downward.

It wasn’t that bad. My son didn’t mind eating on a slope. He drew a line that demonstrated "Sloped from here!" He drew people skiing. And he was very hungry so it made it much easier for us to roll the food down the slope into his open and waiting mouth.

BLL came back and brought us our drinks with no straws, our appetizers with no plates, and we all proceeded to eat with no forks. But the food was very good and we continued to color furiously. BLL returned with our salads and produced a foot and a half long wooden pepper mill and asked if we would like some on our salads. My husband nodded and BLL began to grind, but no pepper came out.

Raising a finger and smiling, BLL took a step back and whacked the pepper mill several times on the back of the booth behind us. To us, this was an ingenious method of loosening the pepper, but not to the man sitting in the booth. Jumping out of his seat and grabbing his head that was mere millimeters away from BLL’s wallops, he gave BLL a very dirty look. BLL apologized, we all donned our protective headgear, and allowed BLL to grind some more pepper.

While awaiting his return with our food, my son held aloft the now detached half moon section of the sloped table that had fallen in his lap. He told BLL that he might need that again later. BLL gallantly gestured to the table next to us that had all its pieces and parts. Happily taking our food with us, we moved to the unbroken table with its fresh new tablecloth that provided a huge fresh surface to color. Looking back at the old table we all agreed that it was dirty and messy, this one was much nicer, and continued to color madly.

In spite of the delicious food, we could not finish it, and BLL generously packed it in round, pie pan, to-go boxes. As he passed my son’s girlfriend her pie pan, BLL fumbled the pan and it launched into the air. Making a valiant effort to recover it, he grabbed wildly at the pan and managed to give it a tremendous punch, which then jettisoned the pan across the table directly at the girlfriend.

Startled, she threw up her hands and the pie pan managed to jettison itself directly into her splayed fingers where she caught it with the finesse of a Boston Red Sox first string, third baseman, and wide-eyed, she exclaimed "Oh My!"

We all clapped our hands at her display of prowess and clapped some more for BLL making an ordinary meal so memorable. We told him we knew of no other restaurant that was so enjoyable and secretly stuffing our crayons in our pockets, headed for home to color our own kitchen table.

Strolling through the parking lot we passed a beat up car with a smashed right fender. All agreeing that it could belong to no one other than BLL, we headed to the new Dick’s Sporting Goods to buy the girlfriend a new leather baseball mitt. She had to be plenty prepared when that most certain phone call came to call her away to Boston.