Friday Night Lies

1  Chicken Lo Mein Kids Meal

1 Sweet and Sour Chicken Kids Meal
1 Order of Chicken Eggrolls (comes with 2)

Please tell me, does this sound like a meal for one person or two? Because the girl at the counter yesterday felt the need to clarify whether I required 2 plasticware packets for this order. Why would she ask me something so insulting? Do I look like the type of person who orders two meals and two eggrolls to devour on a Friday night? Am I that overweight, unattractive and off-putting that she thinks that all I have to do on my evening off is plow through a smorgesboard of asian cuisine while watching a chick-flick and pretending to clean up my studio apartment? The nerve!

To her credit, that is exactly what I was doing that night, so in the most technical of senses, she was right to question me; but doesn’t it seem prudent to just assume that I am ordering for 2? After (somewhat huffily) implying that yes, I would be needing two plasticware packets, I walked out to my car and wondered at myself.

Why lie? They were kids meals after all and I did intend to save some for lunch the next day, so why not be a woman about the whole issue, tell the truth and spare Shu Shus the loss of one packet (which I am sure adds up after a while if people are just taking them willy nilly for face-saving purposes). Truthfully, I wasn’t even disappointed in spending my evening this way, to the contrary, I had been looking forward to it, planning it even, but the problem was that on some level, I had been judged rightly and that tends to make me squirm.

I realized this a few months ago when I had a meeting with my professional mentor. She is always asking for honesty so I basically told her that I honestly had never planned to be a working woman and going to a job day after day was really becoming a buzzkill for me. She of course looked at me like a naive, entitled, lazy disappointment of a student. She reminded me that it isn’t completely realistic to be a housewife sans husband and children. I started crying.

I went home feeling sick to my stomach sure that she had misunderstood me. "I don’t feel like she was listening", I thought, "or maybe I was just stumbling over my words too much" or…Could it be that she understood me perfectly? I mean yes, she has her own beliefs and biases that she might attach to the facts of my life but she has that right. So does the Shu Shus girl. I don’t get to choose their reaction to who I am. But that is exactly what I attempt to do when I edit and talk around my point and try to be pleasing instead of authentic.

I am a double-meal ordering, aspiring housewife. That might be unhealthy, crazy or worse, but it is the truth. It is my own problem or pride and no one else's. So, I guess this is my apology to Shu Shus. 

Sorry for lying about your plasticware.