I was having lunch with my parents at a Hospital cafeteria and we had all pretty much gotten the same thing. So there was little debate as to weather each others food was good or not, we all knew after the first few bites first hand. With that out of the way there was plenty of time for people watching. I managed the good seat and had a perfect view of all the people paying for their meals. Watching people in line has been a favorite past time of mine. I love how people leave their bodies in line while they do other things if they happen to be eating alone. It becomes obvious as to who and who are not together in line. You can point out the single quite easily, they all seem to shatter like glass when the line moves.

After a rather violent destruction of glass I began to notice that the table next to us were also engaged in people watching but they seemed to be vocal about it. I almost never let the thoughts leave my mouth for fear that similar thoughts escape people in my direction. I don’t run fast, they are liable to catch me and take me down. Suddenly they both focused in on a person with a single item on their tray. The woman at the table thought it was a giant salad in a bowl of lettuce. While correct about the salad, she was wrong about the bowl. The bowl was made from a tortilla that had been colored green. The woman in the group however just could not grasp this simple concept. That a food item that was traditionally yellowish was now green. I remember seeing my first bottle of food coloring when I was about 10 along with its magical powers. Maybe she never experienced it, maybe in her house all the food is simply the color it is. Which must have sucked come birthday time. I imagined her cakes as she was growing up with white on white icing and her trying to read the raised lettering of Happy Birthday Michelle. Maybe the candles cast enough of a shadow to make it legible. Probably not until she was about 8 though and only if they used individual candles and not those large number ones.

Her friend tried his best to explain that the tortilla could be green and he offered up a solution of using green maize. Now, I’m no corn expert but I’ve never seen grass green maize before, I would have guessed either mixing it with some legume like spinach or that they simply used some sort of chemical dye. Suddenly the bread I was eating seemed unusually yellow.

When in a group of people at a restaurant, there is always one person who will ask what someone else is getting. This could be for a couple of reasons. The most popular being that they do not want to order something that someone else is going to order. This one always seems absurd to me. As if originality in ordering had anything to do with character. Besides, most mainstream restaurants all have the same 12 dishes, its bound to repetition at some point. This fear of ordering the same dish as someone else seems illogical

There are also those who are just horridly indecisive and maybe other opinions will allow for their own choice to be made. This one is the most interesting I think, in that your answer is more of a timeline gauge, than a genuine interest in the the surrounding palettes. For if you have decided and they haven’t, it’s time to simply go with the chicken sandwich as long as no one has already decided on that. However these are usually the same people who “need another minute”.

In certain restaurants i have a favorite but in other i like to really be diverse in ordering. So when the question falls to me I like to say I haven’t decided, whether I have or not. Moreover I like to not commit to a single dish and keep myself guessing as to what I will get until the waiter shows up. So that when I finally get asked by a person that is interested, I’m pretty much just guessing.