Pasta Molto Dollari

Every now and then, I feel a little twinge of sympathy for Hick. Maybe once a year. Like if he's been wronged in some way. Perhaps by somebody stealing his used guitar strings out of a pocket on the door of the safe he left open at his Storage Unit Store. So Hick is actually ahead in the sympathy tally for this year. Wednesday, my cold, cold heart warmed about .1 degree. Fahrenheit.

Hick had spent the morning working on extending his brick sidewalk to the end of the carport. There's more to that story for another time. Anyhoo... he went to town for something. I actually passed him by the bullet-hole STOP sign as he was returning and I was fetching my 44 oz Diet Coke. When I got home, I saw Hick raking some gravel by the carport. When I came out of the garage, he had plopped a rump on the porch.

"I know you don't like spaghetti, but there's a container of it on the bottom shelf."

This was a bit disconcerting. WHERE had Hick been that had gifted him with enough spaghetti to bring home and stow in FRIG II?

"Yeah. I don't like it. The Pony likes it."

"There's enough in there for three people! Me and him can have it tonight."

"All right..."

"I went to my pizza place--"

Let the record show that Hick has found a Mom and Pop type restaurant in Backroads, where he likes to have the lunch special of a pizza and salad for $8.50. He was always trying to make me go sample it, but then they got shut down during the Stay-At-Home-Down. Hick must have been feeling withdrawals, because he'd wonder aloud if maybe his pizza restaurant was read to open up. Saying they only had a few tables, and surely they were 6 feet away from each other.

"--and I thought, 'I don't want pizza and salad. I'm going to try something else.' So I ordered spaghetti. It was off the lunch menu. I figured I'd get a little plate of spaghetti. But they brought this giant plate of it. When I got the bill, I almost fainted! It was $18.27!"

"Dang. That's some expensive spaghetti. You could buy it at the store and eat a whole month on $18.27 of spaghetti."

"I know! I was mad. That's ridiculous!"

"Didn't you look at the price?"

"They don't put no prices on the menu! I know the pizza price, because it's advertised as a lunch special. But this was just a lunch menu they handed out, listing what food they had. No price. I thought it would be like the pizza."

"Did you complain?"

"No. I gave the guy a twenty, and let him keep the change. It wasn't even ten percent, but I wasn't gonna give them any MORE money, after paying $18 for spaghetti!"

"You know the guy probably had nothing to do with setting the price. He was just a server."

"Well, he's lucky he got a dollar and change from me!"

"I bet a lot of people get mad about that price. The owners probably do it on purpose, and laugh about it. Then the next day, say, 'Cook up a big pot of spaghetti!' I guess it teaches people a lesson. Really. WHO orders off the menu without asking the price? Oh... wait!"

Hick will have to make a lot of sales for a dollar profit at his Storage Unit Store to recoup what he lost on his lunch.