Christmas Eve at Denny's

The name Starving Students is one of my favorite misnomers in the service industry. Usually, you'll be hard pressed to find a single solitary student among the crew that might show up if you hire movers from Starving Students to help you relocate. Furthermore, you'll probably find that students of the moving profession they are not, as I can attest to, once offering to lift my own television after I had watched the very slight little fellas that they sent to do my move awkwardly handle some of my bedroom set and irreparably damage my living room furniture.

I'm reminded of Starving Students because here I was playing mover today and starving like, well... a student at the end of the day's activities. Up and down the stairs, in and out of the garage, through the hallways we went, lugging this and toting that. It was freezing outside, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing as the 40ish temps kept you from breaking a sweat, also kept you pretty alert. It never ceases to amaze me how much faster the truck gets unloaded at the destination, than it got loaded at the original location. There's something about having a light at the end of a tunnel that kicks your body into that extra gear that it saves for just such an occasion. I was almost jumping off the truck with the lighter items that were nearest the door of the truck. With a renewed spirit, I took some trips with both arms and hands full whereas I begrudgingly carried loads half that size on the way into the truck.

I was dying of thirst as the truck was slowly filling to its capacity at the first site. I did cartwheels off the ramp and galloped down the hall with youthful exuberance as the truck was quickly emptying out into the house. Ah man, homey, my mind was playing tricks on me.

How festive I must've looked stepping out of the uHaul truck, looking like a skinny, white sneakered Santa Clause in my red Nike sweatsuit. When we quit for the evening at about 10pm, we were faced with the reality that it was in fact Christmas Eve and our dining options would be limited. After a fairly exhaustive search of the local eateries, we landed at Denny's.Well, actually, it wasn't a really exhaustive search. I just felt like saying that word for one, and two, I kind of felt like some pancakes. Not like a short stack of course, but like a half-hearted, cornball attempt at being clever about the menu of the much maligned all night diner with the friendly yellow sign.

Rejoicing in the accomplishment of having completed a full day of moving, I sat down and casually thumbed through the very familiar menu, my posture suggesting how spent I was, while my saucer like eyes indicated that my waiter might be very busy as long as I'm in the building. I decided on a good, old-fashioned grand slam, but wisely substituted another pancake (or 3) for the additional pieces of toast. I don't know why the grand slam calls for me to get an additional 4 slices of toast to go along with my heavily carbed hashbrowns, and thick buttermilk pancakes.

I sipped some tea after the waiter took my order and I watched a rather motley crew of teenagers stroll in and set themselves up at a neighboring table. They were a pretty rowdy bunch and terribly amusing. They asked for a table of seven, suggesting to the hostess that a couple more were on the way. As more and more of them started to file in, it was apparent that somebody's count was a bit off as their group was fast approaching twice that number. Several of the girls were carrying blankets and wearing slippers and while some of their male counterparts wore pajama bottoms and fedora hats. One guy even had on a tweed sport coat. As if they couldn't look more peculiar, several of them were quite tall. They even started a conversation inquiring about who in their group was actually the tallest. They were hilarious. This was about the time that I stood up to go wash my hands in the bathroom in anticipation of my food arriving. "Look at him. He's taller than all you guys. Wow!" one of them remarked.

Upon my return, I noticed 3 more sets of pajamas walking in. My waiter came to ask if we'd like to move away from this spirited bunch, but I declined, since they were far too entertaining. Perhaps this was some grand Christmas Eve tradition of theirs. They must've been members of the theater department or school band or something. I guess secretly, I was holding out hope that they would start singing Christmas Carols, or something, right there in the restaurant.