I took a mental picture for all of you on Saturday night. I would have taken a real picture, and promptly posted it right here, but I didn't have my camera with me. Also, a little voice in my head said that taking a picture of a complete stranger and posting it on my blog might perhaps be a teensy-weensy invasion of their privacy.
But I can tell you about it, right?
We were at Tucker's Market on Saturday night, celebrating my S & B-I-L's wedding anniversary. If you've been to Tucker's, you know it's not a quiet, formal kind of place. It's jam-packed with people having birthdays (you eat free there on your b-day) and the poor staff have to sing a very short, very fast, very exciting version of "Happy Birthday" several times an hour. (I saw one staff member burst into tears and run screaming into the kitchen when she found out there was yet another birthday that night.)
It's not only jam-packed, but it's a buffet, so if you want to eat, you must climb out of your chair (the place is too jam-packed to allow for chairs to be slid out from the table), head to another room, and visit several randomly placed counters to get your food. Once you've loaded up your plate, you have to navigate past everyone else, without letting your food touch their sleeves.
It's a place that works, I believe, because it is in Canada, and Canadians are experts at saying, "Excuse me," and "Sorry" to everyone in the crowd, for no apparent reason.
It takes awhile to get back to your table, because by the time you have visited all the counters, and apologized to 48 people for your very existence, you realize you no longer have any idea which room your table is in, so there is a short time of wandering aimlessly. Then you either make new friends and join another table, just because you're so hungry, or in a stroke of fantastic luck, you find the people you came with, climb back into your chair, and start eating.
All this to say - Tucker's has a lot of noise and activity going on.
Except for one man. Had he worked several shifts in a row, before coming to this mayhem of madness? Was he part of a sleep experiment gone horribly wrong? Could he not find the coffee pot?
We don't know.
But the poor guy was there with his family, stumbling back and forth to the buffet in an exhausted stupor. He was trying, he really was. And it appeared that they knew this was the best he could do. But he had hit "tired" several hours before this, and he had moved on to an all-out weary desperation, I think.
He came. He went to the buffet. Twice. He found his table again. He ate. And then, elbow on the table, chin propped on his fist, he turned his face casually away from his family as if scanning the restaurant - and fell dead asleep.
I guess he was just all tuckered out.
