Friday, Jul. 20, 2006

Surreality


I saw a strange thing this evening.

Well, to be quite honest, I see things most days that can be qualified as, to take a line from "Beetlejuice", "...strange and unusual, for I myself am, strange. And unusual." Just walking through the day, I often feel like I'm quietly peeking under the surface of everyday life, lifting up the corner to peer curiously at things that no one else around me seems to notice.

Anyhow.

I went out to dinner with my family tonight, and it was near the end of our meal that I saw another family arrive. There was a woman in her mid-to-late thirties, and two boys, about twelve or thirteen. One of the boys definitely looked to be the son of the woman, as he bore her same coloring and general face shape and body type. The other boy could have been a brother, though he looked physically different, brunette and slender to the two stocky blondes.

The first eyebrow-cocking moment came when I saw what the woman was wearing. She had on a pair of track pants, in a faded dark blue. Those were okay. The shirt, however... it truly looked like she had borrowed one of her son's t-shirts. It was tight through the shoulders, and was *short*. Short enough to show off several inches of very white, very flabby belly.

At a rough estimate, she was overweight by about 80 pounds; though, regardless of size, I don't understand in the slightest how someone can leave the house in such ill-fitting clothing. Yes, shorter, tighter t-shirts are fashionable right now. But you *can* find shirts that will, y'know, do the job that shirts were meant to do, ie: cover the belly and chest. And please don't y'all make this into a "just because she's fat doesn't mean she shouldn't love and accept her body" thing. It isn't. It's more a, "Damn, woman, no one wants your naked midsection hanging all over the salad bar."

So, there was that. But, then, they sit down at a booth by one of the windows, though the boys don't stay seated there for long. The two kids had brought their Gameboys, and they proceeded to sit on the two chairs near the bathrooms, near an electrical outlet. They snaked their toys' power cords to the restaurant's outlet and sat, near the bathrooms, playing video games. Meanwhile, the mother sat alone in the booth, nursing a glass of white wine and staring out the window. It was about this time that my family and I left.

It just seemed so surreal to me. Why bother, really? Why go out to dinner, just to let your kid(s) sit in a dark restaurant hallway and play games? I mean, if it were a pizza parlor, that'd be one thing. But it wasn't. And my personal opinions aside about family dinnertimes and appropriate times playing video games, it just seemed... weird. Detatched.

It makes me want to shake my head, to clear the chill breeze from it.

And, on that note... it's getting on to bedtime here. I'll continue to throw surrealities this way, and they occur to me...

saturncat at 9:09 p.m.

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