Whine about dinner

Okay, so for the past couple weeks, Robert and I have been trying to find an evening when we could go out to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, just the two of us, and have a nice, pleasant meal with conversation. We decided last night was it, so off we went.

We were seated in the corner booth, got our drinks and our appetizer and were relaxing from the stressful day -- days -- and having a really nice time when four women came in, passed all the other empty tables and booths and sat down in the booth next to ours.

Of cooourse. You know in the theater, when there are two hundred empty seats and the goobers walk in and sit down right in front of the only other people there? Robert and I are those people.

So these goobers -- er, women sat down and proceeded to talk. LOUDLY. Like make you cringe every time their voices assaulted your ears. And the youngest one had one of those little-girl voices and used odd inflections, like going up, on the last syllable of every fourth or fifth word.

And as if being ungodly loud wasn't bad enough, they were BORING. Sheesh, they droned on and on about the most boring crap you could imagine. Airport delays. Deadly uninteresting jobs. Painful crappy anecdotes. Ex-husbands who, in my never-humble opinion, were lucky to escape.

And they found everything each other said hilariously funny, responding with a kind of fingernails-on-chalkboard, horribly loud, making-your-ears-bleed laughter. No shit, the glasses on our table started vibrating when they were all cackling at once.

They pretty much ruined our dinner. We couldn't talk for all their noise unless we lowered ourselves to their level of social boorishness, and call me strange, but I don't like to share private conversations with an entire dining room full of strangers, whether the conversations are theirs or mine. I just wanted to scream at these women to shut the f*ck up. No one around us gave a damn about their conversation.

But I restrained myself. (Okay, so there's a fine line between restraint and weenie-dom.)

But, man, I hope they were up the whole night with bad indigestion. Rachel7:36 AM