A Diner Sort of Guy

This appeared on Sunday, March 18, 2007

Had lunch the other day at Hooters.

(Pause.)

Now that I‘ve got your attention, I want to elaborate.

There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for what I was doing eating a meal at perhaps the world‘s cheesiest male-oriented restaurant chain, and by cheese I‘m not referring to the Swiss or the Camembert.

My friend had suggested that we get together on Thursday to catch some of the opening round of the NCAA Men‘s Basketball Tournament, but because our normal noontime meeting spot doesn‘t have wall-to-wall television sets we‘d need to pick a different venue.

Hooters, apparently, does have wall-to-wall television sets, sets which are permanently tuned to whatever sporting event is happening at that particular time, anywhere in the world.

My friend knows this because he‘s been there before, primarily, it seems, to watch the opening round of the aforementioned basketball tournament. There may also be some association in his mind between semi-naked men trying desperately to score and the whole Hooters concept, but never mind.

He‘s been to Hooters before, as I said, and he allowed when we got there that if Hooters had been extant while he was in his 20s, his life today would have been demonstrably different than it is, most likely for the worse. I imagine he meant that instead of being happily married with four delightful children, a good job, a house on a hill and a voter registration card with the word ”Democrat“ displayed prominently on it, he would probably be living in a rented room, jobless and near destitution, with only a Hooters' Girls calendar on the wall to keep him company.

Most likely he‘d also have voted for Bush. All four times.

I hadn‘t been to Hooters before, and he could see the discomfort with the whole situation in my face when we got a cheery ”Hi there, guys!“ from our waitress. He‘s pretty much used to my various states of discomfort, but this time he wasn‘t having any of it.

"You‘d be honest with yourself if you just acknowledged the fact that you really enjoy having food and drink served to you by a perky blonde/brunette/redhead in a tank top and nylon orange shorts," he told me. "Just look inside yourself," he said, "and respond to your inner … something or other. Let go and admit that the whole thing is fun."

But I don‘t see myself as a Hooters sort of guy.

I‘m more of a diner sort, and have been ever since my father sat me down at the counter at the Toddle House on Clifton Avenue in Cincinnati when I was 8 and ordered me a cheeseburger and a cup of hot chocolate, while he flirted with the 65-year-old waitress, who was probably named Irene.

Since then, I‘ve always tried my best to establish a friendly working relationship with all of the waitresses that have served me on a regular basis over the years, and have succeeded more times than not in developing a server-servee friendship not based on too much artifice. Also, without orange shorts on either side of the counter.

I‘d like to keep it that way. Besides, the local Hooters is in Concordville, and I don‘t do Delaware County very well.