There are a lot of things I’d rather do.
Being a plumber, I don’t get to eat lunch at regular intervals or at the same place every day like office workers. We take lunch when we can, and sometimes not at all. On occasion, we get to eat with other plumbers that we work with and might even sit down at an actual restaurant. The following story is about one of those times.
I was working with a friend I’ll call “Jim”. Jim and I had just completed installing a water heater in a customer’s house and happened to be just around the corner from a Chili’s. I’m not usually one to eat at the “apostrophe” restaurants (Friday’s, Snuffer’s, etc.) because they usually suck and are filled with the kind of people that I can’t stand. Jim wanted to eat there, so I agreed. Just before we arrived, some other fellow employees had called Jim and asked where he was eating lunch. He told them, and they came too since they weren’t far away.
There were 5 of us at the table, and the waitress came by to take our drink order. Jim wanted to go wash his hands, so he instructed me to order him an iced tea in his absence. When he returned to the table, our drinks had arrived.
Jim: “Thanks for getting me the tea.”
Me: “No sweat.”
Jim: “Oh, you got tea too?”
Me: “Yeah. Well, it’s peach tea.” (I don’t know why I ordered peach flavored iced tea. It sounded good at the time. I’m now glad I did.)
Jim: “Ugh. Really?”
Me: “Yeah. What, you don’t like peach tea?” I begin to take a drink of my tea.
Jim: (looks me right in the eye) “I’d rather suck dick than eat a peach.”
Me: (sprays peach tea back into the glass and onto the table in front of me) “What?!”
Jim: “I fucking hate peaches.”
Me: “Well, no shit. I mean, you REALLY hate peaches.”
Jim: “Yep.”
Me: “There are a LOT of other things I would rather do than suck dick, man. You could make me eat all of the foods I hate before I do that.” (If you’ve read any other blog posts here, then you’d know that there are a lot of foods I hate.)
Jim: “Not me. Just peaches.”
We went on to eat our lunch without incident. We’ve discussed this exchange a few times since, and he still feels that way. I’ve told this story in person to a bunch of my friends, and I get the same reaction every time:
“Man, he REALLY hates peaches.”