I met a friend after six months apart, and when she asked what was new, my two-minute story made her yawn twice \u2014 until a guy at the next table apologized to me because he \u201cfelt sorry\u201d for how bored she looked. Another day, my girlfriend and I went to our usual Japanese restaurant for a small meal, but the waitress scolded us for ordering lightly and told us to \u201cjust get takeout next time.\u201d When she rushed the bill without a word, I left no tip \u2014 something my coworkers later judged me for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Small moments stick with us, too. Back in college, a guy kissed me while a popular song played; we broke up soon after, but 15 years later, every time I hear it, the memory flashes back even though neither he nor the song meant much. And once, a man I met online asked me out for tea and cake; 15 minutes into the date, he suggested going to his place for dumplings. I stayed for three days. We dated for a year, and he eventually admitted the dumpling trick was his guaranteed way to impress someone he liked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not all food stories are sweet. At a kids\u2019 club restaurant, we waited two hours<\/strong> for our order while hungry children kept begging for food. When my husband brought fries from next door, the staff tried to stop us. Eventually a waiter admitted the cook was too hungover to work and a replacement was only just starting earlier orders \u2014 so we left and never returned. Another time, on vacation, we waited more than two hours only to receive a raw steak and learn the staff had spent all that time searching the entire town for zucchinis for one dish<\/em> instead of bringing us the rest of our food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But dining can surprise you in good ways, too. On our first night in Bulgaria, exhausted and starving, we went to a nearby restaurant and were shocked by the giant portions \u2014 nearly a liter of soup, a huge flatbread, and piles of vegetables. The waiter whispered that he had secretly given us \u201cbigger portions,\u201d and from then on, we learned one serving was enough for two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I met a friend after six months apart, and when she asked what was new, my two-minute story made her yawn twice \u2014 until a guy at… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"views":755,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20834"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20836,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20834\/revisions\/20836"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}