My husband has a stressful job and he came home one night with visible stress weighing him down. I suggested we go on a date. It was a school night so it would have to be a quick date somewhere local. Local, for us is a challenge. We live in a farming town with only a gas station close by. We have to travel 15-30 minutes to go anywhere, luckily for us, a great diner opened up about 7 miles from us in the middle of about nowhere.
I served our kids the dinner I had made and Brett and I headed for the restaurant. It seemed darker than usual with just one side of dining area lit. We walked in and headed to a table. A few tables were occupied and the owners sat at one. They looked at us and asked a question, something with the word “party”. Not knowing exactly what they said because I didn’t actually hear them, but assuming she was asking if we were having a party or coming to join the party, some little funny comment about the two of us out on a school night, I nodded, gave a little laugh, and set down.
It wasn’t long until the waitress came over and gave us waters, which I promptly knocked over spilling all over the table and floor. The waitress was good about it, teasing I shouldn’t have anything stronger to drink and cleaned it up. She came back minutes later and took our order. It was while we were waiting for our food that we noticed the room filling up. We also noticed everyone looking at us. Just after our food came is when we realized that everyone else knew each other. They were talking loudly between tables, getting up to hug one another, and asking what to order.
If you know me, then you probably can imagine I wasn’t shy when a lady asked what I ordered and if it was good. I launched into a description that I thought she would appreciate only to stop talking when I noticed her attention was now looking at another table.
Brett chuckled and said, “I think this is a private party. Everyone is looking at us weird and wondering who we are.” I looked around and sure enough they did seem to be looking with confused faces.
It was just seconds after that a lady came to the table to hand us raffle tickets. Brett then explained we weren’t suppose to be there and we would package our food and leave. The lady was super nice and told us it was a party for her husband who was ranked #2 in the national rodeo and they were headed out the following day. We talked for a bit wishing him luck and telling them how awesome that was. We then found the waitress and asked for boxes and our bill.
After noticing they needed our table sooner rather than later, we stood up and made our way to the cashier where our waitress was. She thought we were there with the party and was in no hurry to bring our boxes and check and laughed when she realized we were actually serious about leaving. When she walked off to grab our boxes, I had a good look around. I inwardly laughed when I noticed a big poster board saying, “Good Luck Cody!” and a three tier cake in the middle of the bar with the same words. As we walked out I handed his wife $5 dollars and said, “Good Luck to Cody!” She laughed and thanked us.
Once we were back in our car we noticed the sign out by the road said CLOSED and laughed all the way home. Apparently they are not open Monday or Tuesday but those days can be rented for private parties, as we learned for ourselves.
We could have felt guilty or humiliated for crashing their party, but instead we laughed. With some things I do, we find ourselves laughing frequently, and it always helps lift spirits. We went out to relieve stress that night and it worked like a charm!
-Mary Ethington
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