A highly riddled man walks into a restaurant in America for a bowl of curry. He is seated at a table by the front door. A door he has walked through a dozen times before. So many times that he notices the menu has changed, not the food but the format.
He is visiting the university district of town. This is where he comes when he doesn’t want to deal with a room full of other ordinary Americans.
Every time he eats at this authentic restaurant the riddled man, obsessed with quality, orders the same thing – lamb vindaloo. This time he wants to change it up some so he decides to order off the new menu and comes up with a chickpea curry rice dish, medium spice.
It would be nice if the water had ice in it this time.
Before the food comes he moves towards the restroom to wash his hands. On the way there he passes a large table with people of all ages laughing and carrying on. There are flaming and sizzling dishes of meat being served at the table. The clatter of glasses over boisterous talk makes the man who is riddled with quality and obsessed with quantity think to himself – this scene seems familiar so why do I feel foreign.
Back at the front of the restaurant he sits facing outside to watch any action on the street. There is none so he watches by reflection the large table having a feast of lamb and extra, extra rice.
At the table next to him is a young Asian couple speaking very fast and confident, maybe about what it’s like to be so far from home in a place where nobody within a few square miles speaks with the same dialect, at least as well as they do. They too are laughing and carrying on. He isn’t so sure they are not laughing at him as he is the only one in the restaurant not laughing and carrying on.
He stares himself down in the window, curious how he would treat others if he could speak multiple languages.
The man, who is riddled with quantity and obsessed with quality to the point of falling apart, starts to think back to when he was very far from home at a younger age and didn’t speak any other languages. He can’t recall a time during that trip when he felt overly confident, speaking better English than anybody around him because he had spoken to the translation limitations of each local person by breaking up his own English. He had also shown his intellectual limitations to those who wouldn’t speak to him for not having a proper way to say how the world is…mendable. Even when he spoke to other Americans overseas he was usually spoken to first because he was quiet, a stubborn young man.
He is still stubborn and in his own wisdom he knows not to speak over loud chatter. He knows not to speak to himself. There is nobody here with him at the restaurant to boast about being in a strange land though he is not in a strange land. To this reality, the man riddled with quality and obsessed with quantity falls apart.
“Please stop talking about me. Please stop laughing at me,” he speaks obsessively to the couple.
“The words we all know here are not the only words I know, please,” he speaks of quantity and quality to anyone who will listen.
“Please give me more meat and rice. Please fill my glass with ice. Please don’t charge me that price,” he speaks in a riddle to the staff and family.
The man who was riddled with both quality and quantity is no longer obsessed about falling apart.
He is stubborn. He is authentic. He is mended and will carry on.
Francis Erich McElroy 