Thursday, January 04, 2007

Food Box

We're cheap people. We're getting more and more comfortable in our petty bourgeoisie status, but we maintain our Marxist sensibilities. I really don't know who "we" is here. I'm sort of referring to Possible Flurries and myself, but I shouldn't speak for her. Well, I just asked Possible Flurries, and she says indeed, she has Marxist sensibilities.

Anyway, after hassling for over an hour getting screwed by T-Mobile (I read the Consumerist enough to distrust all rebates, but Possible Flurries does not; still, the screwjob wasn't her fault at all but merely the incompetence of the salespeople. Or "Sales Team," as I'm sure they'd like to be called), we took a unique excursion to W.A. Frost and Company courtesy of a very generous giftcard. I strutted in wearing a hooded UCLA sweatshirt and immediately and constantly felt underdressed. Like I said, we're frugal people; it's not the sort of place we typically frequent. But we had the gift card. I actually ordered a $7 martini. In the past four months, I believe I've spent $7 on a single meal 3 times.

We uncomfortably mispronounced names on the menu. As a vegan and vegetarian, our options were limited, but we did find items that were quite tasty (besides the $7 martini). I truly enjoyed my meal, but it wasn't until hours later that my Marxism creeped in and I realized I paid $13 for essentially lettuce and broccoli (and they were the cheapest items on the menu, people). We enjoyed our time but were slightly uncomfortable the entire time. It was like being in an entirely different life and world for an hour. There were original oil paintings on the wall, the total cost of the meal was more than I spend on food in a week, maybe two, and we were never quite sure if we were acting the way we were supposed to be acting. We figured that the waiter was used to people coming in January with gift cards acting uncomfortable. Ce la vie, it was a night out. A night out. A night out we would remember for a very long time.

After flustering our class sensibilities by striving too high, we immediately flustered our class sensibilities again by going too low. We became perhaps the first people in history to go directly from W.A. Frost and Company to Walmart. We hate Walmart for all sorts of reasons. Yes, the political/social/labor issues. But we also find it a dirty uncomfortable place to be. But we're checking for the cheapest price on an infant car seat, so we were on University for the second night in a row (I stopped by Borders the night before to buy Larry Watson's Montana 1948), this time to stop at Walmart. A dirty confused person walked crookedly by us and I said, "I hate this place." While looking at toys, some very, very loud music started, and I said, "That is awful. We're not buying this anyway, so let's leave."

So our class sensibilities had quite a night. We felt in over our heads at a restaurant that was slightly above our class distinctions, then felt like the snobs we sometimes are at a place seemingly well below.

Fun times, everybody.

1 comment:

  1. It was quite a day. Also, the music that began to blare at us in the toy section was country. I want to add that, because at the time, I wouldn't have laughed so hard if it was just any kind of music.

    No offense, partly cloudy, or any other country music fans.

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