Under Grumpa's Hat

There should be a psychological test at the entrance of every restaurant. Nothing complicated, just one simple question from the server before they hand you a menu.

“Fries or salad?”

Forget personality tests and horoscopes. You can learn more about a person from that answer than from three hours on a first date. Some people immediately answer “fries” with the confidence of someone who’s made peace with their life choices years ago. Others hesitate long enough to calculate calories, cholesterol and whether anyone at the table will silently judge them.

Let’s start with the fries people. These are my people. They understand that if you’re ordering a burger, the fries aren’t a side dish, they’re family. Somewhere, centuries ago, two people looked at a potato and a cow and decided they should never be separated again. It’s practically the eleventh Commandment. Burger and fries belong together like thunder and lightning, fishing and exaggerating, or grandparents who can’t figure out television remotes but somehow know exactly how to FaceTime you by accident.

Besides, asking whether you’d like fries with your burger feels a bit like asking whether you’d like a steering wheel with your car. Even if you say “please”, they’re still fries. They’re crispy little sticks of happiness that have ended diets before they’ve even begun. Good fries have ruined mediocre fries for me forever. In fact, I’ve never met anyone who took a bite of perfectly cooked fries and thought, “You know what would make these better? A handful of lettuce.” And that’s even more true in Poutine Country!

Which brings us to the salad people. I have great affection for the salad people because I have (rarely) been one of them. They’ll confidently order the bacon cheeseburger with a garden salad and a diet Coke, and proudly announce, “I’m being good today.” What they’re really saying is, “I’m negotiating with my conscience before my meal arrives.”

The cheeseburger commits the crime while the lettuce provides character references.

The truly fascinating part is what happens twenty-five minutes later. The server asks whether anyone has saved room for dessert and suddenly the same person who lovingly speared cucumber slices moments earlier announces, “I’ll have the cheesecake.”

I’ve seen this movie before. The salad was never about nutrition. It was permission. The leaf eaten at 6:14 somehow neutralized the molten chocolate cake arriving triumphantly at 6:42. They’re happier, guilt has been reduced by seventy-three percent, and everyone leaves smiling. Frankly, I admire the strategy.

And then, there are the rice people. They’re lovely people, I’m sure, but they remain something of a mystery to me.

I like rice. In fact, I’ve discovered a new appreciation for it while living in Costa Rica. Rice has fed civilizations for thousands of years and deserves our utmost respect. Rice is dependable and comforting. It’s the Labrador Retriever of carbohydrates. Loyal, reliable and always happy to be invited. But I’ve never heard anyone say they drove forty-five minutes across town because they heard a restaurant serves life-changing rice.

Nobody has ever left a restaurant proclaiming, “The steak was acceptable, but my goodness, that rice changed me as a human being.”

Yet the older I get, the more I’ve realized this isn’t really about side dishes at all. I’ve been the fries guy because I didn’t care. I’ve been the salad guy because I cared too much. And I’ve been the rice guy because life occasionally asks us to make choices we’d rather not make.

Perhaps that’s why restaurant menus are more like life than we realize. We spend so much time quietly judging our own choices and occasionally the choices of others. The fries people think the salad people aren’t enjoying life enough. The salad people think the fries people enjoy it a little too much. The rice people simply smile and do their own thing.

The truth is we’re all sitting around the same table pretending we’ve figured something out.

So here’s my unexpected little lesson from a side dish menu. Life isn’t about always choosing the fries or always ordering the salad. It’s about knowing that different seasons of life may call for different choices, and understanding that someone else’s choice doesn’t diminish our own. Happiness isn’t found in what’s beside your steak or beneath your burger. It’s found in laughing around the table with the people sharing the meal with you.

Order what makes you smile. Life gives us enough reasons to deny ourselves joy without volunteering for the job.

Just don’t put ketchup on your steak! Some lines should never be crossed.