El Torito on Cinco de Mayo

A unique dining experience.

After work I went to see Dad. He was in the dining room, asleep in his wheelchair. I shook him a little to wake him up but he was solidly snoozy. I had brought my uke so I got it out, thinking some music might rouse him. It didn't. I played for him anyway. The old couple across the table seemed to enjoy it. At least the husband did. The wife was pretty out of it. I looked around the room. Everyone else was also barely conscious. They must be handing out lots of drugs there.

I played for a little while before they served dinner. Since it's Cinco De Mayo they were serving Mexican food. Or something like Mexican food. More like astronaut Mexican food. Very paste-like.

I had to keep waking Dad up to feed him. Sometimes he'd shudder like he was going to wake up but his head would go right back down. Still, I did manage to get half of his dinner into him. I packed up the uke and left.

As I was driving home I was thinking it would be nice to get some Mexican food. I called home and asked the girls if they wanted to go out to dinner. Paige had already eaten so Lindsay and I went to El Torito. It was a mad house there. The wait was 45 minutes. No big deal, we walked around and shopped. We waited another 15 minutes when we got back to the restaurant. They sat us in that side room. You know, the amplification chamber. Holy caca.

They seated this couple with two very small, very hungry, very loud little kids right behind us. Lots of screaming and crying. Seriously. LOTS! Ok I was dealing with that. Then the waitress seated a party of about 10 people at the big table next to us. They were also kind of loud. At that point we were about halfway through our dinner. One of the guys started telling this story about the mom of a friend of his who had breast cancer and had to have surgery. He went through ALL the gory details. We got to hear all about what they found when they cut her open. We heard all about her tubes and fluids. I stopped eating, waiting for the story to end. I turned around and looked at the guy and at the people around his table. No one looked like they were enjoying this story. I finally said, "Dude, does this story have an ending?" He said, "Yeah, I know, it's so sad." I'm thinking no, it's gross. Right around that time the kids really started screaming. We heard the mom say, "Well, they're so hungry. They've been waiting two hours to eat." Ok, earth to mother! Don't take your toddlers to a Mexican restaurant on Cinco de Mayo! When the waitress came back I asked for the check pronto. From the look on her face I gathered that people must have been complaining.

On the way out we passed by this young couple who had been sitting a couple tables down from us. They had a good view of the whole scene and they looked kind of terrified. The wife was verrrry pregnant. As we walked by I said, "See what you have to look forward to? Har, har!" They laughed. A little.

When we got home the first thing I did was change into my jammies. Ah, quiet.