My favorite time of day is the early morning.
No, seriously, it is.
I probably enjoy it so much because I so rarely see it. Also because when I do manage to see it, odds are good that I’m running only on the barest minimum of sleep and am staying up as long as humanly possible in order to not become completely nocturnal.
Take Saturday morning for instance.
My natural state seems to be staying up all night, going to bed between six and eight am, then sleeping until four. This is the schedule I reverted to over my two week winter break from the preschool, and this is the schedule that I’m attempting to invert.
My friend Sam once told me that the best way to stay awake in the morning is to go get breakfast, so off I went at nine am, book in my pocket, to Perkins.
I’d never gone to a sit down, order at the table restaurant by myself. I only recently learned to go to the movies on my own. It was amusing.
I had managed to forget what day it was, so I was moderately surprised at the crowd that resided just inside the door. There was a hostess with a headset, poised and ready a good fifteen feet forward of her station, which could hardly be seen through the throng of families celebrating the first Saturday of the new year.
“How many?”
“Just one.”
“Really?”
Geez, I thought. How many times had I gone to a restaurant to meet up with someone and had the host assume I was alone? And this woman could hardly believe it. She smiled when I reassured her, “Yes, really, just one,” took my name and gave me a look of sympathy and camaraderie before turning to the family of twelve behind me.
I should have seen it there, I guess. I don’t know if it was relief at only having to handle on quiet person, or pity for the lonely, vaguely punk soul, or sheer appreciation of my bravery and calm in the face of Dining Alone, but whatever the reason, I have never in my life received better restaurant service.
I was seated relatively quickly by a young man who seemed astonished to see who it was that dared to Dine Alone. He commented on my t-shirt, but this is nothing new. People are always commenting on my shirts. I once had airport security admire my “It’s Me!” shirt even as she pointed the gun at me and requested my shoes. The young man gave me that same sympathetic smile, comrade to comrade, and showed me to a table set for two next to – I made a quick headcount – a party of fifteen people. I made my decision and opened my book before they finished passing out their menus.
The menu said they had Vanilla Coke, but then, the menu was a representation of every Perkins in the country. I gave ita shot anyway, but was stuck with regular coke to drink with my scrambled eggs. My waitress was cheerful and apologetic. She gave me the comrade smile.
“That’s fine,” I said, and sipped and returned to my book.
Three more waiters stopped by to make sure I’d been helped.
I mean, you’d think I was a smoking hottie.
I was midway through my meal when Comrade Cathy (no, I don’t think that was her name, but I’m terrible with names, and alliteration is fun) returned with a second coke.
“I added the vanilla syrup we use in the milk shakes.” She was beaming with pride. “I hope it works.”
It did. The Vanilla Coke marketed by CocaCola is good, but it can’t compare with the sweetness of the hand-mixed vanilla syrup variety I’d been ordering long before Coke realized what a good idea it was. This was a true Vanilla coke, and I savored it while the party of fifteen watched with surprise.
I finished, paid, and stepped out into the still-magical morning with a renewed hope for the future. Now I just had to get my cat wormed and I’d be all set.
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