I can remember hearing everyone talking about eating at a certain buffet one day not long after I had started working at the paper. They were saying how great it was and salivating aloud over the fact that you could keep on eating until ... Well, until you couldn’t. Everyone had been teasing one of the guys, Jacob, about how the restaurant had to be losing money on him. He just laughed as if he hoped that were true.
You’d never know Jacob could eat a lot by looking at him. He must have the metabolism of a cheetah. He did tell me he’d been a Razorback cheerleader not so long ago. That would explain it. Come to think of it, everyone talking about the food that day is in their early to mid-twenties. They probably can lose five pounds just by reading South Beach, while it takes my middle age baby boomer brothers and me a whole week just to digest a bowl of grape nuts. Laugh while you can you Gen X’ers, or whatever you’re called these days.
So there I was, driving down the road with a reborn willpower that was about to motivate me into skipping lunch altogether. I felt alive and powerful as I drove and looked around at the passing buildings. Then I spotted the restaurant and found myself attempting to parallel-park.
Now you need to understand that the kind folks at this place are thoughtful enough to fax us one of their menus every morning. When I saw the hotel, my Pavlovian reaction caused me to remember the menu for that day. This caused me to remember the menu had fried chicken on it, which almost caused me to wreck my car trying to get to a parking place. Willpower is great, but until someone figures out how to batter and fry it, it will always take a back seat to good fried chicken. I put money in the meter and hurried toward the feast.
Of course this isn’t just any fried chicken that was causing me to fail at my new diet after I had only been on it for about a minute and a half. This is your mama’s fried chicken, or maybe even your mama’s mama’s. Tender meat covered by golden brown skin. And the best part – all you can eat - which I did.
I arrived in the restaurant and looked down at the buffet in front of me and felt one slight twinge of guilt. I saw the beautiful pile of chicken and remembered something about one of those diets that let you eat all the meat you wanted. Maybe I had willpower after all. Then I spotted the garlic mashed potatoes, and any last wishbone of self-denial was plucked from my consciousness.
The feeding frenzy began, and a very short time later, I had knocked out six pieces. This may not sound like much to some of you, and truth be known I could have stuffed in one or two more, but I went for the carrot cake instead. It’s the only dessert on the planet that could have detoured me from more chicken.
I was full. Not miserable, but uncomfortably satisfied. Jacob probably would have called me a wimp. I took a last drink of water and then, probably looking like a teenage boy trying to pay for a girlie magazine, I paid my bill and walked out of the restaurant. I reached my car and climbed in, and immediately felt the tightness from my middle. I sighed and started the engine, and began thoughts of skipping dinner.