Order and Chaos

The restaurant's dining room is sub-par. We drove into town and found a run down looking seafood restaurant. The sign on the door said, "Due to the hurricane, we do not have many kinds of seafood."

At the door the waitress said, "The only seafood we have is shrimp and catfish." I did not point out that the catfish is probably not seafood because I understand the communication problems inherent in her job. They had stuff other than seafood, like chicken and burgers and salads.

We sat down and reviewed the policy. My eleven year old decided he would have fried oysters. We said, "The only seafood they have is shrimp and catfish." (Yes, we repeated the waitress's logic error for the sake of brevity of communication.) We discussed the available options--there were plenty.

When the waitress came to the table to take our order the eleven year old piped up, "I'll have the crab platter."

We said, "The only seafood they have is shrimp and catfish!"

He said, "Oh!" He ordered the grilled shrimp. The waitress asked him which two side side orders he wanted. He asked what they were, I pointed them out on the menu and went through them: french fries (almost certainly), onion rings, salad (not a chance), etc. He said, "I'll have a T-Bone steak and prime rib."

I gave up.