I remember a breakfast our family once had in a restaurant in Hawaii. It was during winter break, a peak tourist season. The whole town of Kona was crawling with people, and the restaurant we chose was packed.
Our waitress, as you might expect, was stressed out. She was racing around the restaurant, obviously behind schedule. To make matters worse, we were a party of 6, and one of them was my mom.
The waitress was probably hoping for nice simple orders from us, like bacon and eggs or oatmeal. Instead, my mom decided to go all out.
"I'll have corned beef hash and eggs, with the eggs poached. Make sure you don't overcook the eggs (she never says "please" or "thank you"). Let me have that with a lightly toasted english muffin with strawberry jam. Decaf. Guava juice. And, I'd like to start with a 1/2 papaya with lime."
As she was taking our order, the waitress kept glancing around the room, impatient and in a hurry. I knew she was going to mess up my mom's order.
She started out okay. She got us all of our drinks with no problem. Then, rushing by, she dropped off my mom's papaya and dashed off. The papaya had no lime.
My mom wouldn't eat the papaya without the lime squeeze. She felt that the lime brought out all of the papaya's flavor. So she waited and waited for the waitress to come back.
By time the waitress finally returned, my mom was fuming. She pointed at the papaya and said: "Lime?!!"
The waitress, stressed out and in a hurry, looked at my mom like she was an idiot. She then looked at the papaya and looked backed at my mom.
"No," she said, "that's a papaya."
