Crispers, 6:59 p.m. - Noise pollution is for the stupid

I’m sitting in the deserted outdoor smoking section of a Crispers restaurant. Just me and Quaterflash wailing out “Harden My Heart.”

“Gonna harden my heart, gonna follow my tears ….”

Sigh. Now I’m depressed listening to these lyrics.

I can’t even hear the sound of the music now – the noise of traffic in this “retail space” is getting to me. We’re about 50 feet back off the road, but there is a movie theater and a ginormous Chinese buffet in here – and the traffic seems to think the parking lot is a NASCAR raceway on Sundays.

The Crispers is deserted, other than some random old people who I think mistook the place for a Checkers or a Charley’s or something.

This patio is kind of nice. There are ten wrought-iron café tables with matching chairs and quaint red tablecloths. There are even ashtrays – because the smoking Nazis have had their say in Florida too.

Damn, people. YOU DO NOT NEED TO GUN YOUR TRUCK IN THE PARKING LOT!

What is nice about Crispers is that they offer free WiFi. I guess they hope you’ll stay and have another bowl of their crappy potato bacon soup. Don’t. Come for the baked potatoes and stay for the Hawaiian flatbread – but leave the soup alone. It is runny as a three-year old with the green apple splatters and probably as tasteless.

I can see a worker inside wiping down tables and mopping. I feel your pain honey, working retail on a Sunday night when you’d really rather just be in bed.

You know what I don’t like about this place though – the chairs on the patio. I don’t know if it is just my behind or if the chairs are just meant to be uncomfortable – but they are deucedly damned hard to sit in. I keep shifting and shifting and pretty soon I’m going to shift a hole in my pants.

They really could use a bug-zapper or some citronella candles out here. I don’t know about where ya’ll or from, but this is the Florida – and we got bugs the size of alligators down here.

I wonder if I should steal the salt and pepper? They come in those neat “grind-your-own” containers. They’d never know it was me either. Plop, chunk, into the laptop bag. Mine all mine.

The traffic noise is heating up. A movie must have let out or something. Oh. I wonder if there’s an ice cream parlor around here or something. I totally have a sweet tooth.

There’s a truck with a U-Haul attached to it parked out in the parking lot. It is too dark for me to make out the state on the U-Haul. I wonder where they’re from? I took three days to drive to Florida when I came here from my internship ten years ago. I must have eaten at fifteen Waffle House’s along the way – and to this day, I hate that food.

Some dude just came out to start tying up the patio furniture for the night. How sad is it that this business has to do an enormous amount of work every morning and every night because the vast part of humanity is lying, stealing, thieving garbage? I mean, really people – what the hell are you going to do with ten patio sets in cheap iron? Really?

All night I’ve been staring at this huge sign “THIS HOLIDAY DON’T FORGET TO TRY OUR PUMPKIN SHAKE” No thanks. I’ll be passing on that. The only pumpkin thing I like is the color. The sign would also be much more effective if the “illustration” of a pumpkin in any way resembled a pumpkin and not a Peppermint Patty haircut.

Car just peeled out. Hmm. Where are the sirens when you need them?

Back to pumpkins. Who really thought that the taste of pumpkins and ice cream would go together? It is sort of like pumpkin coffee. I mean, I know that art and design and food and fashion are all mixed up now, but just because orange became the go-to color for your walls don’t mean it is the go-to thing for the palate.

Make a pie with your defaced and debauched Halloween carving experiment and shut up about the rest.

Hi. White car. That was a stop sign. Much love.

Wow. They are serious about security. All the chairs get roped together around the table, and then I’m assuming that all the tables get roped together as well.

Prince’s “Dearly Beloved” is going to play us out. Mr. Patio Security Wrapup is giving me daggers even though it is only 7:20 p.m. and the restaurant doesn’t close until 8 p.m.

Mr. Motorcycle. You’re a noise-polluting fool. Much love.