The Pessimistic Optimist

Today Jeffrey and I went to Sonic some happy hour drinks and a popcorn chicken snack to share instead of eating lunch late, then eating dinner late.

The timing of lunch and dinner are important because they are inextricably linked to my late night ice cream binges. These binges have become critically important to me since discovering Krazy Kookie Dough ice cream made by Blue Bell. For some reason the Blue Bell geniuses created this delicious cake batter ice cream and gaudily accented it with psychedelic yellow, pink, and green chunks of sugar cookie dough. I can only assume the reason is because after tasting this delicacy once, you will crave it with Cookie Monster-esque fervor and the bright colors will swirl as you slip into the sugar-induced high. (But I'm only guessing.)

Anyway, when we ordered the popcorn chicken, the apathetic static voice responded, "Sorry, man, we don't have that anymore."

Jeffrey and I stared at each other, mouths agape (but without any popcorn chicken to fill the hole with). Jeffrey suggested mozzarella sticks, but my taste buds had already gotten prepped for popcorn chicken, I declined. We decided instead to go to Dairy Queen and get our chicken bites there, or rather, I decided and Jeffrey had to go along with it because I have to start school tomorrow and he gets to keep having summer.

He was not happy. (Really, he wasn't all that mad, but he just gets a kick out of acting grumpy when I get something I want.)

Once we got to DQ I irritated him once again by asking for honey mustard instead of gravy for our dipping sauce. As we waited for our chicken, he pouted. I offered to ask the DQ worker for gravy, as well.

"Don't," he grumbled, feigning anger.

When we got our order, I asked the guy for some gravy. He bent the rigid DQ employee rules and gave us TWO dipping sauces.

As we drove away, Jeffrey continued his act of sulking. "I can't eat it," he said.

"Why not?" I asked.

He said matter-of-factly, "It's tainted with your disobedience."

We both laughed, and then Jeffrey said, "If someone had just seen that little exchange, they might think we really don't like each other."

The pessimist suddenly turned into an optimist later that night when we went to Pei Wei for dinner. As we walked out of the restaurant, I lamented, "UGH! I don't want to go to school tomorrow! I really do like summer better than school."

Jeffrey responded, "Well, you can get the best of both worlds, because tomorrow is still summer, and you also get to go to school."

Thanks a lot, gravy boy.