Food-stealing ethics

I had dinner with a couple of dear friends the other night. We try to get together and drink with good food as the motivation. Its kind of funny because both of these men are pastors. I have turned them on to fine single-malt scotch and now when they go home or just want to feel special, they pour themselves a couple of fingers of the amber gold but more importantly, they know they can hang out with me and just enjoy a glass of wine without anyone saying to them something stupid like "Youz two now goin' to Hell for consumin' the Devil's drink." Not that anyone in Phoenix talks like that, unless of course, they're out here from West Virginia and they have married their sister's child. Now, don't get me wrong, we don't sit there and do shots of Jack and throw things. At our age, we like peace and quiet. For as much as I talk about it and include it in my stories, I just don't drink. One of my friends even asked me how many beers I drink a week, since I was drinking one. I couldn't remember the last one I had.

So there we sat, sitting on the patio of this fine central Phoenix establishment, they with their wine and I with my beer, allowing our blood pressure to drop. Now, the thing is about this restaurant is it advertises good, healthy, food-healthy. That's fine with me. Based on recent family medical history discoveries, I'm do for a quintuple bi-pass before I'm 60, just nine years away. I run and exercise and don't smoke, I never play with high-power lines if I can help it so I feel pretty good. But its in the cards; I just know it. I started to look around and saw that a lot of the people there were, well, skinny. Other than my two friends and I, everyone else kind of looked like a good steak with some mashed potatoes and gravy would be good for them right about now. I found out why.

When they brought our dinner (one friend had a chicken salad, the other a chicken burger-red flag right there, and I a personal pizza) I knew I would need to stop off at Wendy's on the way home. Now, it was good, don't worry about that. All three bites were fine. It just wasn't enough. Volume, even volume of mediocre stuff, is better than a thimble of excellent food. So, we sipped our drinks, talked about how good everything was, then as we finished, we started looking around at other people's meals. Maybe one of them would leave to use the restroom, leaving their plate unguarded? No luck.

So we sat for a while longer. One of my friends had to leave for rehearsal, leaving just two of us. Eventually we got up and walked for a while, just talking, trouble-shooting life. After about a half an hour, we were done and went to our prospective cars for the quick ride home. On the way, I passed by a Wendy's, Quiznos, two Arby's, and a sushi place. You heard me, I said 'passed.' I wasn't hungry or so hungry I couldn't control myself. Nope, I was a good boy. The idea of my chest cracked open and a team of three doctors, one of them doing their internship from New Dehli saying things like "Oops" and "I have never seen such a blockage" ranted in my skull. However, come to think about it, I probably should of had two beers.