The Fat Guy and Buffets

Buffet

The word is buffet, and it is 300 years old, from the Old French, of “obscure origin” as the kids say, if the kids wrote etymological dictionaries. Obscure origin, but the word is more than making up for it three centuries later. They are everywhere.

Everywhere the Fat Guy lives, and everywhere he has been. I was raised in bowling alleys, ‘burbs and buffets. The bowling alleys will be another story, but the buffets were my fam’s favorite choice for food, at any hour of the day. There are breakfast buffets, lunch buffets, and dinner buffets. We chose them for the obvious reason that they are filled with food.

The Fat Guy likes getting his money’s worth, which pulls him into the buffet and keeps him going back for thirds and fourths because, hey, I just spent $14 bucks and I am still empty.

It doesn’t occur to the Fat Guy not to spend $14 in the first place, or that if he bought the more expensive, smaller portioned, better quality food, he might spend that night’s sleep time a little differently.

The Fat Guy has never been in the army, but he sometimes imagines the chow line looked like this.  Except for the prime rib.

When I was a kid there was a place called Marmac’s somewhere around here. They were a supper club looking place, with a bar, but it was a buffet.  And they had the prime rib, too.  We went there when we could afford it.  It seemed worth it, because, after all … we got — ate — our money’s worth.

[According to this, this restaurant still exists.]

As an adult, I still think along those lines: is this portion worth the price? Not the time or the experience, but amount (of food) compared to the amount (of money).

I’ve heard pastors joke about a verse in one of the epistles where St. Paul says he buffets his body. Hard “t” you see — not soft. And buffets of the sort we’re discussing here are definitely soft.

[The Greek actually says, I pummel my body.]

Anyway, the pastors joke that Saint Paul doesn’t mean he eats at all-you-can-eat restaurants — but that he subjects it to stress and discipline for a greater good.

But for the Fat Guy it does mean he eats at all-you-can-eat restaurants.

Recent

On Real

Learned of late that several people — at least three husbands in young marriages, two with young children, everyone in his 20s — had not only never read The Velveteen Rabbit … but hadn’t heard of it. That sorta explains why it’s public domain and I can link to it here. Also explains why when

Read More »

Subjective, Objective

The other day I wrote on a wing and a whim … and misremembering. Or as Prufrock put it, quoting Woman —   That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all. Nearly nothing I recalled happened in that way. Except of course the recalling. And a bit more. Wasn’t

Read More »

People do the Craziest Things

Adam — did he do what he did for love? Did he say, ‘I will join her; I can’t bear to be without her.’ — is that how it went down? He at after Eve; was it because he’d rather skulk around the earth a sojourner and pilgrim at the mercy of the people in that

Read More »

Time, Treasure

Saw an episode ages ago of one of the Twilight Zone reboots which, I’m pretty sure, starred Mark Hamill as this weird kid who collected toys. All this kitschy stuff from the ‘50s and grew up collecting them — and thus stayed weird and for the most part apparently lonely for his life entire. Of course

Read More »

Random

On (Not) Using Words

Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. Quick now — who said that? Me. Just now. Weren’t you paying attention? The saying is sometimes attributed to Francis of Assisi, most likely erroneously, as many are gleefully wont to revel in and reveal, should someone dare voice the view. To which the only

Read More »

Game Face

F Buechner on the faces we will meet or do not … T.S. Eliot read by Sir Anthony Hopkins … Helen of Troy, beauty + danger … 3D-printed face shields … Melania Trump … Cassavetes … Gangsta … FDA … … ah, but we find this hard

Read More »

Old Flannery Coat

The porch steps were slick with rain this morning, and I realized I knew people whose first reaction to someone slipping on them would not be sadness — let alone to help — but rather to laugh. These are the sociopaths-in-training. These are the men and women I pray get their asses kicked like Al

Read More »

Ark Of The Christian Life

Not God is the phrase they use in AA for realizing we are, well … not God. And no, I’m not an alcoholic. No really — I’m not. Not God is also the answer to the question, WTF? What is wrong with people, this place, my parents, and our upbringing, education, choices and decisions, and probably

Read More »

Related

Not Free

During the Cold War there was a list of countries and their level of freedom. It still exists but we pay less attention to it.  I recall three categories — very free, free, not free — and I remember ratings were based on politics, economics, and so on. So too in man. We are very free, free,

Read More »

Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time, my children, before the Social Media Olympics, before the rub-on tan; before the laptop with no DVD drive, before the waters had begun to rise again; before the Hybrid and the Hulu, before the earbud and the Entenmann’s outlet; before there were tweets and tweakers, yea afore they had invented the

Read More »

Around the House

One night I watched about half of “Extreme Makeover: Personal Edition.”  Or something like that. It was about body renovations instead of housing, which is an interesting way to extend the brand.  I can’t help wondering if as they pitched the idea a guy didn’t say, “Heh, heh — fat people … house … get

Read More »