Old People Hate Rap Music
The Christian Science Reading Room is looking good
When I first read about waterboarding, I couldn’t figure out the problem. It sounded like wakeboarding, so I looked it up.
It’s wrong to waterboard someone, and it’s not because water or boards are inherently evil. It’s the combo.
By the same token, it’s torture to put an old person (“Old”) into a loud place, tantalize them with delicious food, and then shock them with a bill on par with a surgical procedure.
This is called dining out in America.
We tried a fancy restaurant. I watched as the “Youngs” frolicked in the cool, cascading waters while I got randomly pummeled with the trifecta firehose of despair: rap music, weird tiny furniture, and $4 butter candles.
The water kept on coming, and I had no one but myself and a rapidly declining Western civilization to blame.
The Dancing Penguin
This restaurant was not called The Dancing Penguin, because the days of animal whimsy in dining are over.
We are in the Age of Code.
The best places are inside jokes between the head chef, Gordon Ramsey, and Elon Musk’s smart toilet.
You will need a satellite link to get a reservation. Your phone must be charged and only GPS can get you there.
It may require an app, and possibly a helicopter.
If you can’t type with your thumbs, give up now.
They were supposed to give me a code, but it never came, so I had to ruin the clever surprise by speaking normal human English words, out loud, to the hostess.
“Lady, how do we get in?”
She immediately recognized us as four “Olds” and smiled sweetly. She did not pat me on the hand, but I could see she was restraining herself from saying “Awwwwww.”
We sashayed through the secret bookcase passageway, ignorant that this was the most confident we would be all night.
I had hoped for a spiral staircase leading to an underground chamber, the sounds of water dripping, and the hum of well-fed humanity behind a wall.
We walked inside to a normal-looking posh restaurant and because we were Olds, it was just after 5 pm.
The Legless Table
The table had four steel legs reaching for the ceiling. It was a cage with room to squeeze as if entering a bunk bed. My husband, the eternal optimist, pointed out all the good parts.
“Legless means no tripping!”
My feet and knees were safe, but I took every opportunity to knock my elbow against the edge of the cage, and the feeling of being imprisoned settled in like a raccoon to a poorly secured attic.
We ordered focaccia as an appetizer, and it was served in 3 pieces — odd when you consider most parties are two or four — with a butter candle the waitress lit while giving us a safety briefing.
Does she always over-explain it’s an edible candle? No doubt, but I panicked as I imagined my future in a nursing home with a CNA holding up a fork and explaining what each tine is used for.
The bread was oversized and assertive yet riddled with giant holes. Its texture was bold like the Sahara desert.
I would come to regret my relationship with the butter candle. I should’ve tossed the oozy candle remnants into my purse, recalling what my mother taught me when it came to bread and butter and pastries.
I picked an entree from six poetic choices through a process of elimination, sidestepping kale chips, asparagus, polenta, or a $30 cheeseburger.
This left a catfish/tortellini combo.
Anime Is Everywhere
Our waitress exuded anime, which reassured me everything would be okay, despite the rising volume of the music and my restraint in pleading:
“Could you turn the music down and the temperature up?”
I swiveled my rapidly graying head and saw mostly Olds, unsurprisingly because it wasn’t yet 5:30 on a Monday night.
I observed the pot bellies contained in button-down shirts and the jewelry dripping off matrons with heroically coiffed hair.
Age spots danced before my eyes, or maybe those were floaters.
As the Olds trickled in, the cooks clanged their cacophony of kettles and cutlery while boom-boom bass tracks blared the B-word.
The noise escalated like a loud escalator to hell, but I was hungry and semi-trapped in a bunkbed so I stared at my diet Pepsi and wondered if sobriety was worth it.
I fled to the ladies' room, which is where the noise wave subsided enough to clearly make out the lyrics, mostly droppin’ the F-bomb.
I’m just tryna eat some fancy catfish, yo — I don’t want Megan Thee Stallion rhymin’ about the injustice of being a rapper in the patriarchy.
I know how Olds call every genre they don’t like Rap, so it might’ve been hip-hop. It could’ve been a genre I don’t know the name of, but it was mos def not quaint like Queen Latifah.
How I long for the halcyon days of Ice Cube.
I considered languishing in the restroom but the morbid grief of my unhip soul was making me queasy and claustrophobic.
The scales had tipped. The eagle had flown. The mouse had landed, in a trap, with a thud.
I’d eaten every last bite of pricey grub and sampled some pork because it surrounded me on both sides, so I was more stuffed than a caveman in a natural history museum diorama.
Still, I desperately needed more of the lubricant of the gods, butter, so I spoke up.
The anime server kindly yelled back at me that more butter would cost $4.
Apparently, they only had butter candles in the larder and someone would have to run down to Denny’s to find the bottomless bucket of free butter pads.
Serenity Now
Disorientation set in as my blood sugar skyrocketed and the sound of Olds screaming over the rap music echoed.
I saw the best minds of my tired generation crawling on the floor, groping for their hearing aids.
The men used their CEO voices while the ladies shrieked.
I felt stunned and stupefied, as I tried to solve the riddle and ride the wave of existential overwhelm without a surfboard.
Why? Why was I paying so much money for mild disappointment and tepid condescension?
Without invoking Sartre or Camus, the answer was simple: I’d invited our two guests. When I was young and confident a half-hour earlier, I also said I would pay.
Also, I am in denial about being an Old. Yes — me, the writer of such passionate diatribes as “Old People All Dress Alike.”
I still believe a cola should cost 50 cents and motel rooms should never crest $60, so $200 felt like I should’ve gotten a day at Disneyland.
I wanted to linger, maybe get a $12 cup of decaf with a half-n-half candle, but the noise drove me into the mean streets where the sun was still shining brightly.
Stay Home If You Don’t Like It, Grandma
The secret passageway was one-way so we stood around like immigrants at a bus depot, waiting for release.
A young man who’d recently graduated from elementary school to sous chef led us through the kitchen and out the door.
Ah, the quiet downtown street — filled with diesel trucks, bikers, and cicadas!
Oh, for the sound of car alarms that would eventually stop!
I felt I’d been mugged at gunpoint by a guitar solo while watching a loop of the final battle scene from Lord of the Rings.
They’d bamboozled me into paying for an experience I would’ve rejected had I known any better.
Yes, the fancy tortellini with some kind of intercontinental bolognese sauce was tasty. The melt-in-your-mouth catfish made me forget it was catfish.
The legless table provided brief conversational fodder and the charming butter candle — while ultimately a delicious tease — was worth talking about.
They served our dessert on a little wooden shelf/window made to resemble one your grandma would use to cool a cherry pie back on the farm.
It had tiny lace curtains, where a breeze would waft.
Farm nostalgia briefly overcame the rap music as I imagined grandma baking, without fanfare or her own cooking show.
If you’re gonna push the farm narrative, maybe don’t get any rowdier than “Thank God I’m a Country Boy.”
“Yes, but it’s always been this way. Dining out has always meant putting up with noise, inconvenience, and high prices for the sake of feeling special.”
Am I addled? I recall a nice thick steak, cooked to order, surrounded by respectful or perhaps fawning service, with white table linens.
Can we make America quiet and fawning again?
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Jean Campbell is based in Hot Springs, Arkansas. She has been writing on Medium for years. She’s recently published her first novel, a YA journey called Down and Out on the Road South, with Wings ePress.