next time, order in

Restaurants are great places until they think you're trying to steal their crap. It turns out that if you go to lunch with a friend to a place that gives out those buzzy light-uppy things in order for the host/ess to tell you when your table is ready, and then you decide to go to Barnes and Noble for five seconds because it's right next door and the wait at the restaurant is forty five minutes at 2 PM on a Sunday, the aforementioned buzzy light-uppy thing will not necessarily just beep to let you know you're out of range... oh, no. A simple beep does not always suffice. Because you might not just be at Barnes and Noble for five seconds; you might be trying to make off with their buzzy light-uppy thing, perhaps to use as a prototype to open your own Buzzy Light-Uppy Thing store.

So instead of a hey-where'd-you-get-to courtesy beep, the bastard busts out with the "whennnnnn the moon hits your eye like a big-a pizza pie, that's amore..." song. No lyrics, mind you, because God must not completely hate me. So I hear this deafening monstrosity and start laughing because it's not coming from me. Then Steve says it's coming from me. But no, it can't be, my cell phone isn't even... oh, shit. And we're about a mile from the exit, which means walking past 3,000 people, all of whom are glaring at me because they think I have the Lady and the Tramp song as my ridiculously loud ringtone. But ultimately the restaurant got its way; we were back in there in about 3.2 seconds and proceeded to wait dutifully like kids at detention. When our table was ready the buzzy light-uppy thing simply blinked red and vibrated a few times, apparently having made the decision to communicate with us in a rational way, not in a way that makes me want to knock over a self-help display and scream, "WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO TELL ME? WHAT IS IT THAT YOU NEED?"

They're onto something, though; Best Buy should put the full-volume amore song on all of their merchandise, and nobody would ever steal anything. That thief would get five steps out the door and then run back in, apologizing for swiping those iPods and begging the staff to take them back and make that godforsaken song stop. And then later, they'd have an inexplicable craving for Italian.