Friday, June 08, 2007

Another Lesson from Philly

The first lesson was never pull money out of your wallet when you’re so tired you feel like a zombie. Today’s lesson is similar, never leave anything of your's unattended under any circumstances anywhere. Ever. Here’s the story.

I had my first cheese steak at Gino’s today, it’s the place across the street from Pat’s King of Steaks where a scene in Rocky was filmed. The food was great, but there's a lot more to this story.

After getting my order and sitting down I noticed that the tables had pictures of famous people who had eaten there, my table had a picture of Bill Clinton among others. I took one delicious bite out of my cheese steak and realized that I had forgotten to get napkins. So, I left my food and went about 10 feet to the condiment stand where I picked up my napkins. I tried to return to my table but noticed that my food wasn’t where it was before, but rather one table over which had a picture of Clay Aiken among others (what a step down). In addition to being in a new location there was a Gino’s “speak English” t-shirt and bumper sticker sitting there along with, what appeared to be, my cheese steak with a single bite taken out of it and a Pepsi. I was confused to say the least, I’m probably a little more patriotic than the average person, but I don’t think it’s so obvious that the owner’s of Gino’s would just throw free merchandise my way.

I decided I’d sit there for a little bit to make sure nobody wanted to claim the shirt, or what I thought was my sub. After about a minute and a half I decided I might as well eat, so I had the sub and decided to hand around a minute and see if somebody was missing a shirt. Eventually the guy one table over (in what turned out to be my original table), who looked startling similar to me, started to look for something. He turned around and asked if that was my shirt, I replied that it wasn’t it was just sitting there, so if he bought one it was probably his. At this point it became quite obvious to me that this guy had gone to get napkins at the same time I did and sat down at my table, so as a result we wound up eating each other’s subs with one bite taken out of them. While I had figured out what had happened, apparently the other guy didn’t, or just didn’t want to mention it. I sat there for a minute as he continued to eat, waiting for him to turn around and ask “hey, did we eat each other’s order’s?” but he never did. After a minute I thought that the whole interaction would be too awkward and just decided to leave.

I don’t know if the guy ever came to the realization that he ate my cheese steak and I his. Oh well, it tasted great no matter whose order it was.

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