... the father I met during a lunch date today at Sweet Tomatoes.
Go ahead and ask yourself what these nesting cups...
and the crazy dad in Sweet Tomatoes had in common. Go ahead. I'll wait...................... You'll NEVER get it........... (unless you're crazy like him...............)
Okay, I'll skip straight to the story b/c I'm telling you - it's a good one!!!!
While I was at the pasta bar, I noticed a boy about the age of eight walking around with nesting cups stacked on his head. I mean, he had them all stacked on top of one another (nested), and was balancing them on his head. I thought it odd, but I went on with my pasta picking, plucked a warm brownie from the dessert counter and sat down at our table. Several minutes later the girl I was with asked me if I had seen the kid with the cups on his head... "WHO could miss it?" was my response. You better believe throughout our lunch we kept an eye on balancing-nesting-cup-kid as we just pondered and pondered over the story behind it.
During my third trip to the pasta bar (keep comments to yourself), I once again ran into the kid and his dad, and I just HAD to take the opportunity to ask what the deal was. Of course I disguised this interrogation with questions like, "Are you working on a new skill? Just bored? Going for a record???"
The dad's eyes widened, he leaned closer to me in a very odd way, tilted his head down which caused me notice that he was wearing a hat like the kind Dr. Hannible Lector wore at the end of "Silence of the Lambs" and said that ever since the little boy was two and they were out in public, they had him balance the cups on his head b/c it kept him calm and helped with his posture. (I mean, you can't act like a fool and balance cups on your head - but you certainly can LOOK like one.) And that was it - they walked back to their crazy table, and I walked back to mine with eager anticipation of sharing the strange information that was just given to me with my friend.
Before the family left, the dad made his way over to our table and proclaimed that he had worksheets on the idea that he could email me and promptly asked me for a pen and paper. I could not find a pen in my purse (not that I really wanted to, either), so he interrupted the people eating behind us and asked if they had a pen he could borrow. (REALLY??? It's that big of a deal that you need to go on a hunt for a pen?) Iguess it was life and death. Anyway, I'd like to point out that at this point their weirdness is truly topping the charts as I notice the boy balancing the cups is starting to unzip his pants. I just wanted the whole thing to e.n.d., so I quickly jotted down his email address to make him happy. He wished me a good day, and that was that, and the family walked out of Sweet Tomatoes while the son trailed behind with the cups still on his head.
As you can imagine, the child's been doing this for many years, so no, the cups NEVER fell. He walked all around the restaurant and even made big body movements, yet those cups never moved.
I've spent the rest of the day perplexed. Can't decide if I should've left the restaurant thinking, "What a sight!" or, "What a freak!"
**Just for the record = I don't usually judge others so harshly, but this one seems to be in a class all by itself. While I appreciate the creative idea of the cups keeping a child calm, one truly can not go through life balancing cups on their head. Is it just me? Can I get an 'Amen'?
No, I am not going to email the dad for his worksheets. What are they going to be, anyway??? Multiple choice? Matching? Match the freak to the crazy idea???? Okay - so now I am starting to feel bad.
