-{The next installment from a dormant series}-

While staying in Estacado, I have been the guest of my good friend Kyle. Kyle has been a great host in every respect but one. In The World According to William, when hosting somebody from out of town, it’s best to make accommodations for them to eat where they want to eat. You live there. You can eat wherever you want to whenever you want to. If they’re just in for a couple of days, they may want to eat some specific places. Now, if you really don’t like eating there, maybe you find a compromise.

Kyle has been really hip on showing me some of what he considers the best restaurants in Santomas to be. I appreciate the thought. I really do. But there are already so many great restaurants here that I already know about. Eating at a new great place (and I don’t doubt that the food would be good) just gives me another place to miss and to add to an already long list of restaurants I want to eat at. Fortunately, I managed to convince them not to take me to a place that I knew I wouldn’t like, but even that took effort. I don’t like raisins. No, it doesn’t matter how great or “unnoticeable” they are. I don’t care if I can just overlook it if I don’t think about it. I don’t want to overlook it. I want to eat at a restaurant I haven’t been able to eat at in over two years.

It’s a really hard point to get through. I run into the same problem with my father. We have a tradition of eating breakfast together. I want to eat at Happy Burger, which he likes as well as most other options, but he keeps wanting variety (which come to think of it is kind of odd for Dad). He keeps wanting to take me to Denny’s because he has a coupon. But he, and I, can eat at Denny’s any time (and I’ll pay for Happy Burger!). I don’t get the opportunity to eat at Happy Burger very often. Fortunately, I think after a few rounds of this he’s finally “got it.”

Yeah, I’m whining and grumbling a bit because I had a list of three restaurants I wanted to eat at over five meals and I only got to eat at one of them. Two of them couldn’t be helped just because of my itenerary, but in two cases I was left with the choice of either going somewhere alone instead of enjoying food with my friend (I should add that these are restaurants that I know he likes, he recommended a couple of them to me in the first place!), getting into a dicey standoff with my friend who has otherwise been the perfect host (and whose efforts on my behalf lead to the visit in the first place!), or skipping out on where I want to eat for a new place that I either won’t like or will like and will not be able to eat at again.