Lunch

I think everywhere around noon time this conversation has to be happening to dozens of people.

“I’m hungry!”
“OK, what do you want to eat?”
“I don’t know I’m just hungry.”
“Well, there’s Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, Pasta….”
“Eh, whatever…”

It got me thinking today, as I was desperately searching the internet for restaurants in the area. Why? It’s probably just us, you get two people together that don’t like to make any extra decisions and when one really doesn’t have a preference on where to go, it can put a lot of added pressure on the decision maker. It’s not like we work in the boondocks and we don’t have a vast amount of choices to go to. We could visit every continent within 10 miles of our office but almost everyday we have the same conversation. Sometimes it’s easy, “hmmm, soup and salad from Chevy’s sounds good”. Or “I think something light, like Panera” Then there’s days like today where for 15 minutes I list of places and get lukewarm responses to all. I mentioned last week that we needed to expand our horizons since it seems that we migrate to the same places all the time and the wait staff has gotten to know us on a first name basis, but, it hasn’t really motivated him to branch out. We finally ended up going to a deli and had what I thought was a pretty good lunch, a little pricy but what isn’t now a days. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get him back there because of that but, at least we did manage somewhere different. As I walked back into the office I found myself still wondering what it is about us that makes it so complicated to decide what to have for lunch. I suppose we could just bring our lunch, then the decision about what to eat would be taken care of, but, for us then we would have to decide if we wanted to sit outside at the picnic table or would we want to go to a park? We could sit in the atrium but then we’d have to talk softly and there’s not much people watching going on in an office as small as ours. For that matter we usually know what’s going on with everyone before lunch time so the entertainment value’s not there. I suppose we could pick different types of food on different days and see what alternate restaurants are out there but I think I might make too much of it and there would be charts involved, it could become really complicated really fast. I have been told that men don’t really crave things usually. It’s by some fluke that you find a man saying “You know I would kill for a Bacon Cheeseburger right now” and that may be one of the reasons that we have this conversation so often. That along with my own disillusionment with the food industry on a whole has led me to really think about where and what I'm eating, and it's made the choice far more labor intensive. I suppose I could make it easy and find a few new places that I think we might like and drag him along but….he’s a man and can get kind of whiney if 1. I don’t feed him quickly and 2. It’s anywhere out of his realm of comfort. I guess for the moment we’re going to be stuck in this rut. At least tomorrow we’re going with other people and they’ll have to decide what to eat.