Being True to . . . One's Restaurant

A few weeks ago, I was in a nearby city, and we were looking for a restaurant. Have you ever traveled to a city, where you were looking for a restaurant and you had no clue where to go?

Well, we were looking for a restaurant, and happened into an Italian restaurant. Well, the restaurant said so-and-so's Italian Restaurant. I had a picture of a guy throwing up a pizza to clue in those who could not read the words. There were red and white checkered curtains in the windows, matching table-cloths on the tables. It seemed like an Italian Restaurant.

We sat down, hubbie and I, expecting Italian food, and then opened the menus.

Here are some of the items on the menu:

Seafood – and not just calamari (Italian), but fried flounder, shrimp and other things;

Fried chicken – the least Italian food I can think of;

Quesadilla, and other Mexican dishes – er, not really Italian;

Gyros – yeah, Gyros, Souvlaki and the like;

Hot Subs and something called Hoagies (I think hoagies are a man's sub sandwich);

Wraps – I really don't know where wraps came from, but I don't think they are Italian.

I had a bruschetta appetizer, eggplant parmesan, a small (Greek, I think) salad, and some (American) red wine.

The point of this is not to tell you exactly what I ate that evening; that's just and added bonus. This Italian restaurant is not doing what it is supposed to be doing. I don't want to be able to get won tons at an Italian restaurant – a restaurant needs to be true to itself. A good restaurant, at least.

People are the same way. People need to be true to themselves. Let's say, for instance, I am an extravert, that I enjoy being around people. That I really like going out in public, chatting to people, doing my little social butterfly pollination by flitting from table to table.

I can't just not want to go out and have fun. Now, reading a good book is wonderful, especially if I am surrounded by a warm bath with bubbles. But for an extravert, people get charged with groups.

In high school, part of the ritual was to fit in. And in doing so, we were doing things that were not true to ourselves. We pretended to like movies we don't like, like people who were popular, like music that others like as well. But more than that, we kept secret parts of our lives that weren't so "cool". We kept secret . . . .

I kept secret the fact that I love reading, that I enjoy classical music, that I like corny movies.

Many people remember the good ol' days, when they were in high school. Yeah, I miss them too, but I enjoy so much about being an adult. One of the things I love the most is that I can be me, that I enjoy being me, and I don't really care who finds out that I love to read, that I love reading, that I like corny music.