last week, the 13th to be exact, was noah’s, my youngest, birthday. tradition at the terrell household is that the evening of your birthday you get to pick what the family eats – be it going out to eat at your favorite restaurant or having the family cook your favorite meal at home. noah is definitely a child who loves to eat out so pam and i knew that we would be eating out the night of his birthday. in fact, noah had been talking about his birthday for weeks before hand. noah had decided that the family would go to “las palmas” – the best mexican restaurant in baton rouge (which isn’t saying much because baton rouge is not known for mexican food). this was cool because pam and i both like “las palmas” and adam, my oldest, somewhat likes the restaurant also. this seemed be a “win / win” situation and i was excited about that.
of course, noah decided to change his mind the actual day of his borthday. that afternoon after i picked him up from school he announced his decision to change the plan. it went like this. “dad,” he said, “do you know where we are going out to eat tonight?”
“yep,” i said, “we’re going to ‘las palmas'”
“nope”
“what? you said ‘las palmas’ this morning.”
“i changed my mind. now i want to go to my favorite restaurant in the whole world.”
it was at this point that i braced myself. first, i really thought that las palmas was his favorite restaurant in the whole world (excluding rasin canes or mcdonald’s), and second, this was his birthday and our tradition said that he got to pick the spot. what would happen if he picked “ruth’s chris steak house” or some other extremely expensive place to eat? so i prepared myself for the worst and asked “what’s your favorite restaurant?”
noah said “the same place i went for my birthday last year and the place i want to go every year!”
last year for some very random reason noah picked to eat his birthday meal at “the golden corral“. we had only eaten there once before during his six previous years of life. we did not eat there again duriong last year because his borthday meal wasn’t the best experience. i’m not usually a food snob. i like very simple foods and simple resturants. yet our previous experience at “the golden corral” had been such that i could not believe that noah would want to go back there. so i asked him why it was his favorite restaurant.
“because i can get pizza, nachos, and tacos at the same time.”
his answer made sense so we went to “the golden corral” and i have to admit that it wasn’t that bad.