Check, please.

Summerville, Saturday evening. Me, my mom, and my stepdad. My stepdad's desire for an omelet at 7p.m. propelled us in the unfortunate direction of Perkins restaurant.

We were waiting for our food, and seated near a table full of rather uncultured-looking folks. Okay, I won't mince words here.. the entire family of six had the glazed, beady-eyed, piggish look of generations of inbreeding and poor dietary choices. I know it's mean and judgmental and blah blah blah, but you'll see why. We were minding our own business, when suddenly my mom murmured, "Whatever you do, don't look to your left."

Of course my head snapped to the left fast enough to give me whiplash, and my eyes fell on the splattery sight of a pile of vomit next to their table. Apparently, the daughter, who looked to be about 12 or so, had gotten ill and been rushed to the bathroom. The timing was such that our food was just arriving. We looked down at it. We looked over at the puke. We waited. No one came along to clean it up. The family sat there, poker-faced and silent. I felt kinda bad for them at that point, but possibly not as bad as I felt for myself. My mom made a comment that she hoped a waitress didn't rush by without looking down and slip in it.

I noticed a booth across the room that'd been recently vacated, and suggested we move. With as little fanfare as possible, we gathered our things and transferred them. It took more than one trip. As I was collecting our beverages, one of the remaining family members made some snarky comment to the tune of: "I hope one of y'all never gets sick" as though we were switching tables merely to humiliate them. Before any hope of restraint, I snapped, "We're not trying to make you feel bad - we just don't want to look at it while we eat!" and stalked off. In retrospect, I was unnecessarily polite. Clearly that's not something they're used to, anyway.

Oh, and did the good folks at Perkins offer to pay for our meal (which by the way sucked anyway)? Three guesses, my friends. The first two don't count.