All These Places Have Their Moments, With Lovers And Friends, I Still Can Recall, Some Are Dead And Some Are Living, In My Life I've Loved Them All

--"In My Life", The Beatles

One of the last things I talked about with Jennifer was how cool it was to have a full ninety minutes for my lunch at Robinson's May. It afforded me the time to eat out at places like Sizzler, Claim Jumper's, and Olive Garden whereas before I had to limit my area to places like Taco Bell and Subway. In fact, one of the last humorous anecdotes I related was how I had taken up eating at The World Famous Tommy's, even though the closest one was about twenty minutes away by freeway. What did I care? At ninety minutes I could afford to drive there eat for about forty-five minutes and drive back to work. Actually, what I talked about was how I had to orchestrate eating a double chili burger and chili fries while attired in a full dress shirt and tie. I told her how with every bite I had to flip the tie back, hunch my back over, and bite through delicately as to not cause an errant squirt of maddening chili.

She laughed when I visited her the next time, remembering even ask if my streak of not getting any on me had been broken. Three months of eating at Tommy's at least once a week and I had yet to get one tiny blemish on any of my shirts. I think it amused her that I was intentionally putting myself in embarrassment's way. "I had to do it for the chili, Jen. I'm not going to let cleanliness stand in the way of making sure my heart explodes... twice." She'd been my favorite person to go to all the worst fast food places, Fuddrucker's and Topp's, the KFC buffet in Temple City, The Shakey's Buffet, and, of course, the Wienerschnitzel buffet down in Huntington Beach. I think the latter was her favorite. It was always our private custom to head down there after a couple hours watching the waves roll in and take another hour or so to power through six, seven, or eight regular chili dogs apiece. At five bucks for as many as you wanted, it was a steal. Not only was it cheap nourishment but it had built-in entertainment value. By the seventh or eighth hot dog it definitely became a show of who could complain who was stuffed the most and how much they wanted to stop but they just couldn't. By the last time we made it down to Huntington Beach before she got sick we had raised the routine to almost a play in and of itself--catchphrases and choreography, you name it.

I think it made her sad in a way she couldn't come out with me to have a good old-fashioned greasy lunch with me. She might have felt that she was letting me down in a way. We both knew it was no fun to eat at a greasy spoon by one's self. You really need somebody to complain to and stage a mock protest. "I'm not eating this crap again. I'm gong to keel over right here. You might as well strap a bomb to me for what it's going to do to my cholesterol." You can't beat an eating buddy who herself has experienced the strange attraction of meals that are insanely awful for your health yet are blissfully decadent to the taste.

There was nothing I could do to ease her mind about that fact. Somehow we both had to quickly reconcile ourselves with the fact I'd be eating without her far more often than I would by that time. And we also had to come to grips with the fact that that time would soon become forever.

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I had to stop in Pasadena today to pick up a package from Empire. On the way back I thought, what the heck, I'll stop at Tommy's since there's none to speak of in Long Beach that I know of.

It still isn't the same without her.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers