HAPPY!!! HAPPY HAPPY! HAPPY!!!! HAPPY!!!!!!!!

The family and I went out to dinner last night. We went to a new Mexican place next to the river. There are no caps large enough, or any font bold enough to properly convey the degree to which I *despise* being assaulted by someone’s birthday festivities at restaurants.

The entire staff of the restaurant gathered near the kitchen. In unison they began clapping. Clap! clap! clap! clap! This call to arms went on for at least a full minute, attracting even more perky young people in loud polyester shirts. When the ranks had swollen to well over twenty, they began walking. Clap! clap! clap! clap! clap! clap! clap! clap! Now they weren’t just clapping. They were also randomly shouting things like “woo”. Woo, and other words that sounded sort of Mexican-ish, that i don’t know how to spell. Like that high-pitched trilly throat thing that you always hear when there’s a Mariachi band in the area. For lack of the proper term, we’ll just call it a “dldldldldldldl!!!!!!” So now the restaurant staff has mutated into a terrifying demonic army on the march. Clap! clap! clap! Woooooo! clap! clap! clap! dldldldldldldl!!!!! clap! clap! WwoooooooooooWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! clap! clap!

I don’t understand why my high-chair bound son was not mortally afraid, but he wasn’t. He just watched with the same facial expression I display when there’s a good documentary on. The Army of Doom marched until they found their victim- 40 year-old Marsha Kaputnik of Oakhurst. Marsha grinned with sheer joy the whole time, like an Orc at an all-you-can-eat Hobbit buffet. She actually not only approved of this, but she even enjoyed it. The Army belched out their rendition of some type of lawsuit-proof corporate “Festive Birthday ™(c)(r)” tune.  You know, every restaurant that performs this ridiculous humiliating ritual must have its own contrived song so they won’t be sued by other restaurant chains, or God forbid, the fabled and feared copyright owner of the tune “Happy Birthday”.

We spent precisely 60 minutes at the restaurant.  In that period of time, it happened not once, not twice.  Six times.  I am perplexed that that many people who all share the same birthday in the same town all decided to eat at the same restaurant on the same tuesday night.  At that rate, there must be 21.8 quadrillion people in this town (population 500,000) who were born on the same day.  How’s that for a statistical anomaly?

Trying to reason this out is futile, as the paradoxes are staggering.  This is a new restaurant in a relatively upscale part of town.  It’s not a really expensive place, but it isn’t a dive either.  Therefore, people who go there must have a fair amount of money.  Dessert is free for birthday victims, but it’s just a crappy Sopapilla with some goo on it.  How much could that possibly cost?  “Aha! People are telling the Orcs it’s their birthday when it really isn’t, just so they can get the free dessert!  Case closed!”  You might say to me.  Nope, that doesn’t fly.  Why would someone spend $20 per person on dinner, and be too cheap to buy the $1.97 dessert?  Not only that, but why would they intentionally subject themselves to the Serenade of the Damned on top of it all?

I propose wide-sweeping reform in the industry.  From now on when some jackass so much as hints that it might be his birthday, he should have his clothes shredded off with a box knife, be hog tied, and forced to eat Alpo from a urinal in the center of the restaurant.  That should serve to fulfill the idiot’s massochistic fantasies until next year.