Cold Eggs

This morning my husband and I dined out in Portland at a place known for serving "the best breakfast in town." Neither of us had been there before. We arrived together, sat together, ordered at the same time, were served simultaneously and left together. But Mitch enjoyed himself and said he couldn't wait to return, while I'm not going back there and am writing this blog about it.

Here's why: Mitch's food arrived piping hot and mine was stone cold. Mine got cold sitting on a steam table waiting for his to get hot. If the waiter had asked if I preferred mine at its peak flavor and not when Mitch's was done, I would have said yes, by all means, but nobody gave me such a choice, instead assuming that I wanted my food to be of inferior quality but be able to consume it while my companion was eating his. This is a bad situation and one to be avoided at all costs, but that's a different blog post altogether having to do with the egregious injustices that we all endure in order to avoid doing the dishes. Right now I am simply observing that each of us has our own set of experiences, unlike those of any other person, yet some of us constantly compare ourselves to others and feel as if we--or they--don't measure up. That's dumb.

One example of this is when you are walking along and something reminds you of your dead best friend who you still miss terribly or you just woke up from a bad dream about a completely headless woman on line in front of you at the bank who was nevertheless talking, and you start freaking out about it and some complete stranger passes and says, "Cheer up, nothing's that bad!" Or, even worse, "Smile!" I hate that. What do they know about the nightmare playing out inside your head?

An unimportant occurrence can sometimes yield a big insight. Mitch's good breakfast and my bad one reminded me that all of our lives are unique, even when they look the same. And in case you wonder why I didn't send my food back to the kitchen to get heated up, I say: Do you have any idea what they do to food that gets sent back? (I do.)