D is for Denny's

Tuesday, February 3, 2009 at 8:41am

As many of you know, today was nationally-advertised Free Grand Slam Breakfast Day at your local neighborhood Denny's. Immediately, I was totally pumped, and who wouldn't be? Free breakfast is free breakfast. Plus, anyone who was in Dr. Glockhamer's class for senior English can automatically recall the movie "Smoke Signals" and the infamous "Your dad took me to Denny's" story. Man, who doesn't love Thomas-Builds-the-Fire? So, with all this on my mind at 11:00 Sunday night, I knew that I had to embark on a quest of epic nature and uncertain consequences- I would go to Denny's. My sister and I already had our plans laid out: go to sleep early (early, as in asleep by Tuesday morning), wake up at 5:00 and book it down to Denny's to go eat free breakfast and ironically quote goofy movie lines. Little did we know that untold horrors awaited us...

Not being one to enjoy the earlier parts of the morning, i.e. the buttcrack of dawn (that's a technical term for "really freaking early"), I woke up at five and went back to bed for another ten seconds, only to find out that ten seconds here meant half an hour. So, at 5:30 in the morning, my dad unceremoniously opens my door and asks me if, in fact, I intended to go to Denny's this morning. I'm not sure how I managed to answer coherently, but I did. I'd waited long enough, I thought, to get that free breakfast, so I was going. However, after a freezing ride down to the Denny's by the mall in our piece of crap Volvo, the realization came that my sister and I were in for tortures of the mind and body unlike anything we'd before put up with for free food.

It's a proven fact that old people love three things more than anything else: waking up when it's dark, coffee and grumbling about anything. Well, guess what Denny's serves up as side dishes with their complimentary Super Bowl Grand Slams. Oh yeah- everything that old people like, including but not limited to: early, dark mornings, coffee and things to grumble about. Sounds like a recipe for success, right? Well, all I can say to that is "hahahahahahahahahahaha" and "no". Ask yourself this quick question: what's the greatest amount of old people you've seen ever in your life? 'Cause let me tell you, there were at least 400 of them at Denny's this morning, and that's just in the lobby. You know, that front part of the restaurant that only has like two benches for you sit on and a claw machine full of stuffed animals? Yeah. There were 400 old people in there, and that's discounting the rest of the people there- the one's that didn't grow up listening to Churchill speeches on the radio and the ones who can remember when you could get a car in any color you wanted, as long as that color was black. In all, there must have been 600 people, all waiting for a seat in place that can only legally hold around 240 customers without violating the fire and building codes.

Being packed in a tiny, smelly room with the dead and dying for about an hour can wear on anyone's nerves, so maybe it's understandable that some people got tired of waiting for a seat and got a rain check instead. However, nothing can justify the unholy rage of Stinky Beardman, one of the guys I had the pleasure to stand next to for an hour. When he and his buddies weren't snarking about the economic commentaries a scenario such as this one could make (if they knew anything about economics, then they'd know that it doesn't matter how good or bad the economy is, people will still show up in droves for free food), they were whining about how the Man- in this case, a short, fifty-ish Hispanic woman with long, braided hair- was keeping them down. If you've ever seen Alan Ginsberg, then you've seen this guy. If you've ever smelled a bushel full of hobos, then you've smelled this guy. So, let's just carry on with that image in our heads, shall we?

After about an hour of waiting in a standing-room only lobby full of octogenarians, we finally got a table. There, we wondered what could make our little tour of pain any worse, and it was there that we got our answer, for, in accordance with my general bad luck, I scored a booth that was not only within smelling distance of Stinky Beardman and his hobo posse, he was the only thing I could see when I looked up from my food. Naturally, this did not make keeping said food down an easy task, but I persevered. I'd gone this far already, so I was gonna see it through. Granted, it would've been easier to persevere if the restaurant had been any warmer than the outside air, which was a balmy "freaking cold", but there wasn't anything I could do about that except clutch my jacket even tighter and pour about half a gallon of Tabasco on my double portion of scrambled eggs, rendering them not entirely unlike napalm. However, my attempts at normalcy would be in vain, which is ironic, because "vain" is a homonym of "vein", which is the bodily structure that STINKY BEARDMAN STUCK A HYPODERMIC NEEDLE FULL OF UNIDENTIFIABLE LIQUID INTO WHILE SITTING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE RESTAURANT. Reread that last sentence a couple of times to let it sink in. All done? Now do it again and realize that your horror at this concept pales in comparison to mine and my fellow diners because we saw it happen. I mean, this guy could've one to the bathroom to administer his insulin/morphine/rhino tranquilizer, but instead, he figured "Nope, the middle of this crowded dining room is fine!" Fantastic. Just fantastic. Watching a hobo shoot up right in front of me while I was eating my pancakes was like a nightcap of disgusting on my morning of stupid. Oh, yeah- and I forgot to leave a tip on my $5.08 bill (constituted by two, count 'em, TWO glasses of juice), so guess who got to zip on down to Denny's again to leave a tip with the hostess for a waitress that I couldn't even identify by name? That's right, me. Hoo boy, that was fun.

In closing, if you're ever thinking about going down to Denny's, ordering a Grand Slam Breakfast, quoting Sherman Alexie movies and generally having a good time, don't.