Something Fishy's Going On

Mr.4444 and I had a night alone on Saturday, so we decided to enjoy a meal together, courtesy our friend, Mike, who gave us a generous gift certificate to The River's Bend restaurant. As the name implies, it's a nice restaurant with a beautiful sunroom looking out over Duck Creek. That night, they offered an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet, but we opted to order from the menu. My tenderloin shish-kabob was great, and Mr.4444 had a tenderloin steak.

We've been practicing having conversations that do not center around the kids, and it was easier than I thought. Getting out (away from the computer and T.V. was nice.) After a while, Mr.4444 drew my attention to the table behind us. Three couples, who had arrived before us, were packing up to leave. And when I say packing, I really mean it; they had six, large to-go containers full of food, as well as three large to-go soup containers. Interesting, considering they had all eaten from the seafood bar. That's right; they loaded up on the buffet after they had finished eating and then asked for to-go containers! Unbelievable.

This reminded Mr.4444 of a time when he was a teenager working at Shakey's restaurant. Shakeys served a variety of signature pizzas, mojos (fried potato wedges), and broasted chicken on its All-You-Can-Eat buffet. Mr.4444 was working one night when the manager had an altercation with a female customer who had taken more than her share of trips to the buffet. Mr.4444 remembers the altercation well, because he said it was like Jack Sprat and his wife yelling at each other; kind of comical. The manager finally pulled her purse out of her hands and opened it to reveal a plastic-lined booty of buffet offerings. As he puts it, she had "like a 16-piece bucket of chicken and mojos" packed in her purse! The police were called, she was forbidden from returning to the restaurant, and the rest is history.

When our waitress came over to see how our food was, we told her about what we observed. She was not surprised, and we had a good laugh. She later returned with the bill and a small to-go container and turned to leave. Quickly, I called her back and said, "Wait; could we have about six more of these, please?" (I was suddenly hungry for some seafood...)