First COVID Breakfast outing
Morning time is my time. One of my favorite excursions is to take myself, and a good book, out to a local breakfast café. I idly read the morning away while slowly consuming my first meal of the day. With the onslaught of COVID-19, my delicious morning routine came to a screeching and shuddering halt.
Before C-19, I divided my breakfast visits between several cafes. But for months, all of them had closed their doors. Then, like the slow opening of a poppy flower on a summer morning, we were eventually permitted to enter eating establishments once more. I was still wary and cautious, but my need for morning quiet time at a breakfast café was overwhelming. I decided to give it a try.
On a hot and breezy Eastern Sierra Nevada day, I drove down the mountain to an appointment. I then decided on a breakfast place along Main Street, famous for its waffles. With my face mask-protected and my hand sanitizer squirt-ready, I was whisked to a table 10 feet away from the nearest human. This particular human had taken off his mask to eat and was talking so loudly he might have well been five inches from my right ear. Other people glanced at him. I was sure someone was going to tell him to tone it down. He was going on and on about car panels and a house he wanted to purchase but was out of his income range.
Four of them were at the table; Three men and a woman with really dark hair and matching dark eyeliner. Her makeup looked as if she was compensating for all the times she couldn’t go out and wear makeup over the last few months. It seemed as though there were layers of eye liner representing every day of the week under her eyes. I wanted to go over and tell her that she was beautiful without all the extra paint on her face, but over the years I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut and my judgements to myself. Yes, I was judging this woman who I didn’t even know. That was my first inkling that going to a restaurant too soon after being quarantined might not have been the best idea for me.
I don’t care how much makeup anyone is wearing so why that day? Why was I was eyeballing everyone who was eating their breakfast? The same questions were on an OCD loop in my head: “How long had they been out in public? Were they being safe? Would their germs drift over to my table when I wasn’t looking? Were they washing their hands?” I was being ridiculous. I could feel an anxiety attack looming but determined to push it back down, I opened my book instead.
The waitress came over and asked if I wanted coffee. Yes, I told her. Decaf, please. She brought over the coffee but no sugar or cream. I had to tell her how many of each I wanted. I was embarrassed. I rarely drink coffee but when I do, it has to taste like warm coffee ice cream in order for me to swallow it. When I told her five creams, two yellow packets and 3 white packets of sugar, I got ‘the look’ of someone who thought I was better off just drinking water. She was probably right. Drinking coffee with all that crap in it sets off a chain reaction in my digestion system which has me running for the lady’s room almost immediately. I should know better.
My scrambled eggs with onions, hash browns and toast arrived. The bread looked like it had been run through the toaster a few times. Maybe it got stuck. Instead of asking her to take it back, I requested jelly packets. I noticed the toast had already been buttered and felt my anxiety level rise a notch. I don’t know why it bothered me that it was already buttered, but it did. My mind-sucking questions began to emerge. “Who buttered my toast? Were they wearing gloves? Were they wearing a mask? What if their hands had just touched a dirty cup from a customer and then buttered my toast with those same gloved hands? Who had the person who buttered my toast been around the last two weeks? When did all these questions become part of my inner thought process?”
I know when. March 2020.
Adding to my apprehension, a new pair of customers sat in the booth across from me. I watched as they tried to arrange themselves, so they weren’t right across from one another. It was amusing. They wore their masks until their food came and had a rather enthusiastic discussion about the film Double Jeopardy. One of them said, yes, if her husband had set her up as his murderer and then she found out he was actually alive, after she had spent years in prison, then she would have no problem shooting him again. Double Jeopardy. Then their conversation morphed to how much wine one of them was drinking at night while lying in bed watching episodes of Forensic Files. I was glad they were out of their respective houses. Lying in bed drinking bottles of red wine, night after night, wasn’t good for anyone. I watch Forensic Files too, but only a few times a week. Not every night or maybe I would also be drinking alcohol.
I looked down at my plate. The burnt toast was still there. I wasn’t going to eat it. I felt guilty so I decided to cut it up into little pieces and move it around my plate so it would look as if I had attempted to consume some of it. I couldn’t stop my OCD thoughts of who had buttered the burnt toast. I was actually afraid of this toast. Being frightened of buttered toast from a restaurant that has been around longer than I have, was crazy. What has our world come to?
I piled my plate of half-eaten food with the scraps of used salt and pepper packets, flatware, and the 10 mini, non-GMO, project-verified original International Delight half-and-half containers. I didn’t want the girl bussing the tables to have to touch my stuff in case she was super paranoid like I was about the buttered toast.
I know my body well enough to know that I would have to use the loo before I headed back up the mountain. I gathered up my wallet, phone, and book and headed to the bathroom. I opened the stall, set my stuff down on the floor and took one loop of the mask off of my ear because I was alone in a bathroom stall and needed to breathe freely while I peed. As I turned to sit down on the toilet, the other mask loop on the other ear slipped off and the entire mask fell into the toilet. I did not have an extra mask in my pocket, but I had about 50 extra masks in my car. I knew I would have to walk from the bathroom to the exit without a mask and one more time, my anxiety level jumped up a notch, wondering if I was going to be reprimanded or arrested for being a non-mask wearing, irresponsible human.
Needless to say, I ducked my head low into my chest and raised my t-shirt over my nose. I almost ran out of the restaurant, praying I wouldn’t trip over my worn-down flip flops. No one said anything as I left the waffle place where I had had scrambled eggs, hash browns, and burnt sourdough toast. I think for now I will eat breakfast at home and treat myself to a homemade waffle. It was an exhausting experience.
