Handicapped Salt Shaker?

I usually try to write about things that actually happen to me, but tonight I'm making an exception because what happened to my wife today is eminently blog-worthy.

Beth and her mother had lunch today at a Red Lobster.  Whatever they were eating required salt and pepper, but the only salt and pepper on the table were in mills.  You've seen those things.  They require you to grind the sea salt and the pepper corns, and sometimes it's kind of difficult.  At 91 years old, Beth's mother barely has the strength to retrieve a Kleenex from a box, and she had a lot of trouble with the salt and pepper mills.  A salt mill or a pepper mill requires two hands, and Beth only has one hand at the moment because of the cast on her left wrist.  They couldn't operate those things.

The waitress stopped by and asked if they needed anything, and Beth said they needed salt and pepper.  The girl pointed out the mills to them.

"But we can't operate those," Beth said.  "Have you got a regular salt shaker?"

The girl was baffled by what Beth said, and she pointed out the salt and pepper mills again.  Beth asked to see the manager.  She explained to the manager what the problem was, and the manager said they can't get salt any other way than the way it was on the table.  Beth offered to give her $5 to buy a box of salt, and the manager said they can't really do cash transactions with their vendors.  Beth pointed out that you can buy a whole case of regular salt and pepper shakers for next to nothing at a restaurant supply house, and apparently the girl was befuddled by that.

Beth pointed out that people like her, or people with severe arthritis or amputees or others with impaired hands might appreciate having regular salt and pepper shakers.  The manager didn't really seem to comprehend the nature of the complaint.

This country prides itself (I think) on making accommodations for people with disabilities, and it seems strange to me that a company as large as Red Lobster hasn't figured out that salt mills and pepper mills--while probably delivering superior products for their "gourmet fare"--are simply inaccessible to some of their customers.  Ironically, there were probably ten empty disabled parking spaces in their parking lot, but two customers at the same table couldn't salt and pepper their food.  Isn't irony great?

ED

Dear Santa...

...This is what I want for Christmas:

This will help a good boy (me) be even better.

ED

Chili

I got a craving for chili this morning.  I make a big pot of it two or three times a year, and today was the day.

Welll, I screwed it up by putting too much salt in.  I called my friend, Addie, to see what to do, and she said to put a raw potato in it to absorb the salt.  I did that.

Then I called my son-in-law, Chef Mike, and he said the only way to get rid of a too-salty dish is to dilute it.  Following Mike's instructions, I added another can of beans, another can of tomato sauce, and a can of crushed tomatoes.  That diluted the salt, but it made the chili so tomatoy.  I wasn't the good chili I usually make.

The irony?  Beth had chili for lunch, and she brought home the leftovers for me.

ED

Re-casting Yourself

Beth's broken left wrist has been in an arm-length cast for two weeks as of today, and late this afternoon she finally got fed up with what she said was the "stench" coming from her "dirty arm" from under the cast.  I never noticed any odor at all, but evidently she thought she did.  So, this afternoon she took off her cast to wash her arm.  She didn't cut it off, which I've heard of people doing; instead, she slipped it off.  After she washed her arm, she slipped the cast back on.  I asked her if there was any pain doing that, and she said there wasn't.

I have never heard of anybody doing such a thing before.  When I saw her in the kitchen after her shower, I asked her where the cast was.  She said she took it off, but she also assured me she'd put in back on in a few minutes.  And she did.  She said she knew she could take it off the first day she had it on because it's loose.  If you read back in this blog for a couple of weeks, you'll find that the cast was the $60 alternative to the $6,000 operation the doctor proposed as an option.

Beth broke her leg a couple of years ago, and that did require surgery.  She says that the broken leg was an alligator bite, but the broken wrist is a mosquito bite.  Our friends offer great sympathy, of course, but she's quick to point out it's not colon cancer, it's not throat cancer, and it's not Parkinson's Disease, all afflictions our very closest friends had/have.  I'm constantly amazed at this woman I married up with in 1973.

ED

Eye-witness to Crime

Like most people, I've seen the odd running of a red light or stop sign, which are "crimes" of a sort, but today I saw the real thing up close and personal.

I discovered, via Beth, some fantastic seafood gumbo that comes pre-packaged and ready to heat up at Publix.  It's a Publix brand item, but it has whole shrimp, crabmeat (including the odd shell), okra, tomatoes, and a wonderful dark roux like real seafood gumbo is supposed to have.  The package says it has "Cajun" spices, but it's really Creole gumbo.  The best Louisiana food, in my opinion, is Creole, not Cajun, but the Creole-Cajun distinction is hard for non-Louisianaians to comprehend in the world of TV chefs who have never set foot in Louisiana.  The gumbo doesn't come with rice, though, and gumbo without rice is like Eggs Benedict without Hollandaise sauce.

A few doors down from Publix is the China Wok.  I went in there today to buy a small carton of their white rice to put in my gumbo.  A boy of maybe fifteen or sixteen went in just before me, and he might have even held the door for me.  I had seen him coming out of a Firehouse Restaurant a few doors down with rolled coins in his hand, and I became suspicious of him immediately.

He got to the counter ahead of me, and he said something to the Chinese man behind the counter that I didn't catch.  I placed my order, and I heard the kid say to the Chinese man that he had rolls of dimes.  I think he said each roll was worth $20, and he had five or six rolls.  The man gave him the bills, and the kid took off sort of running.  I looked out into the parking lot, and he was dancing around. 

I paid for my order (96 cents, but they gave me a nickle in change from my dollar bill, which I put in the tip jar), and left the store.  I was walking to my car when I saw the Chinese man come out in an obviously aggitated state.  The kid had ripped him off.  He had wrapped up pennies and claimed they were dimes.  The Chinese man was pissed off.  I asked him if the boy had given him pennies instead of dimes, and he said yes.  I told the man to call the cops, but, alas, he didn't understand me.

What that kid did was a crime, albeit a low-level one.  I doubt he wanted that money to buy tickets for the Christmas Dance at his school.  If he's doing that at fifteen or sixteen, what is he going to be doing in ten years?

The people who own that Chinese restaurant are obviously immigrants who are working their butts off to succeed in the American Dream.  They recently opened a second restaurant in our neighborhood that I haven't been to yet, and there are usually two, three, or four toddlers and young kids in there when I go in.  They weren't there today, though.  When I've talked to the kids in the past, their English was faultless. 

What I'm seeing in this restaurant is emblematic of the immigrant experience in the United States.  The parents are limping along in English, getting robbed in one of the oldest stings there is, and their kids are playing on laptops while their parents dish out wonderful ethnic food behind the counter.  I assume the parents are documented and legal aliens, but I don't care one bit if they're not.  They're helping this country be itself, and I'm for that.  I just wish they hadn't been victims of crime this afternoon.

Irony?  How often do you see that kind of thing happen?

ED