We March had a show in Cleveland on the 25th.  As usual, we got all sticky, sweaty, and rancid, then slept at some person's house, and then drove home the next day without taking a shower.  Normally, this wouldn't bother me at all.  It's part of the job and it's a good time.  Only this time, we decided to spend our pay from the show at the Olive Garden.  It was a half-dare in the car as we cruised an exit looking for someplace to eat lunch.  Yet, somehow we all talked ourselves into it. 

There is no doubt about it, I'm the most self-conscious member of We March.  When we pulled in the parking lot, I immediately felt pre-embarrassed and pre-ashamed to be as dirty, unkempt, and foul-smelling as I was. I could mentally picture the look on the faces of everyone in the restaurant--their looks of disapproval.  I mean, all of us had holes in their clothing.  Curtis had hole-shaped sunburns on his back that peeked through the holes in his shirt.  My breath... my God!  I hadn't had a chance to wash away my dragon breath.  To look at us, you would think we were a gang of homeless people that decided to celebrate after mugging a guy for his cash. I kind of hoped a manager would take one look at us and shoo us away.

To my surprise, they sat us in a booth in the far back of the restaurant. As time progressed, I relaxed and realized just how silly my early feelings of embarrassment were.  It was quite liberating to not give a damn what other people thought of me--almost zen-like.  There was no way I'd ever go to the Olive Garden, or any "nice" restaurant dressed and smelling as I was.  Yet there I was.  It was like getting used to cold water in a pool.  What was the big deal, after all?  We had money. We weren't bothering anyone, we didn't lean over their tables and rub our stink in their faces.  If they had problems, then they were the ones with problems, not me. 

We let them be and they did their best to ignore us, but you could catch them looking over from time to time, checking on us.  Diners with line of sight to our booth no doubtedly updated their dining partners as to our current status. 

"You won't believe what that table is doing now, Pamela?  That guy just stuck his gum under the table."

Yeah, that was me.  I tried to throw out the gum before we entered the Olive Garden, but unlike Wendy's or MacDonalds, the Olive Garden doesn't have trash cans by their entrance.  I was going to stick it in a napkin, but napkins at the Olive Garden are made from fabric.  I don't swallow gum at all.  So that left sticking it under the table.

The whole event was actually good for my self confidence.  We tipped well and left without incident.

It wasn't until later, as I replayed the meal in my head, that I noticed something odd about our seating arrangement.  The Olive Garden sat us in the back of the restaurant.  That wasn't unusual.  I'd sit us in the back of the restaurant if I was the manager.  What was unusual were the people they sat directly next to us.  When we originally sat down, there was a couple in the booth next to us.  One or both of them was mentally retarded.  They had down syndrome related facial features.  Then, they sat a large black family at the table next to us, and later, an Asian couple that wasn't that good at speaking in English took over the booth of the down syndrome couple. All the minorities and odd folks, like ourselves, were stuck in one section of the restaurant.  The rest of the place was full of well-dressed white people.  Wow.   I could understand isolating the smelly punk band, but the black family was well dressed and seemed well-to-do financially.  Same for the Asians.  Olive Garden, at least this one out side of Cleveland, segregated us!