The Emperor's New Pepper

I had gone to Macaroni Grill. That was probably my first mistake. It was my last day at my old job, and my parents wanted to take me out to eat. Unfortunately I forgot that this was the plan and had earlier eaten a huge burger and a drank few equally huge beers. I was drunk. And I was going to dinner twice.

The fact that I could only imagine being able to choke down a salad (at best) meant that my ordering was simple. I would have a salad. And on this salad I would have ground pepper. Or so I thought.

The quasi-goth, semi-chubby, faux-waitress arrived and took our order. Experiencing buzzed subjective time it seemed like she immediately returned with my salad. Thats where things took a turn for the argumentative. This half-measure of a woman pretended to grind pepper onto my salad. I courteously explained that I believed her mill was empty, but she countered that the pepper was very fine. I leaned close to my salad and commended her on her ability to dissolve pepper into subatomic particles.

I was ignored because I was drunk, but the charade was too much for me. Even now! My parents sat there and pretended that she ground out pepper for them. In their defense, my dad did condescendingly comment on just how fine it was. So it's not like they bought it (or Dad didn't). But we sat our asses in those seats and ate like Peter Pan; imagining we were consuming hallucinatory spices.

It's the night that's been replaying itself over and over, projecting its madness on the very bone and tissue of my head.

Has this ever happened to any of you?