On my way to pick up Jonah and friend in Lake Placid, I stopped and had breakfast at the Noon Mark Diner -- three blueberry whole wheat pancakes. Tasty.
This diner has a cushy location. It's right in the middle of hiking country, so everyone who eats there (it seems) is either on their way out or on their way back. Either way, food is much appreciated, and it doesn't even matter how good it is.
It's also a place that has some indirect meaning to me; that is, it has meaning to people who are important to me, specifically my friend Helen and my wife. For both, it is a special place where they've had good moments in their lives.
I think. See, I could be remembering this incorrectly. Maybe one or both of them said to me one time, "That place has good pancakes." I extrapolated, and in my mind the Noon Mark Diner is, for Helen, as important in her life as the chapel she was married in.
I call this the "Cream Cheese and Jelly Dynamic." Or at least, that's what I'm calling it right now. When I was in about third grade, I must have asked for a cream cheese and jelly sandwich for lunch. Being a typical boy, anything other than a grunt and a shrug is very, very meaningful. Thus, I received a cream cheese and jelly sandwich in my lunch each day for the next nine years. It occurred to me a few years ago that at any point, I could have asked my mom to pack something else, and she would certainly have obliged. I think I didn't because it would have required more than a grunt and a shrug and I couldn't be bothered.
More awkward than this is the same dynamic with new in-laws. Whatever is offered from them to me, I do my best to accept with effusive appreciation and joy, no matter what I really think. My in-laws, on the other hand, want me to be happy, so anything that makes me happy will become part of our routine. Thus, I consumed far more tuna sandwiches and grapefruit juice than I really cared for.
The bright side is that we're past that now, and can speak honestly about all things. Plus, they never offered me cream cheese and jelly.
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