Nothing on it

When I married an Englishman, I never suspected who was coming to dinner. I quickly discovered that my husband, Alan, had little fondness for many of the foods I enjoyed most. He winced at the sight of all condiments and rejected every vegetable with the exception of peas. Corn on the cob and turnips were unthinkable foods, best suited to livestock. Tomatoes were only marginally better. When a friend once asked him why he disliked salads, he replied, “It’s the green bits.”

Unfortunately, Alan’s food preferences were to have serious impact on the pleasures of dining out. Once, when the daily special at a family restaurant featured kernel corn, he recoiled from his plate in disgust when our waitress placed it on the table. Resolving never to repeat this unnerving experience, from that day forward he prefaced every meal order with the words “and no corn.” This directive was to have a surprise effect. Bewildered waitresses, who had not once mentioned the word corn, erroneously assumed that Alan wanted it. Several times his order arrived with heaping mounds of corn on the plate.

Although my spouse did not have a distinct English accent, there were traces of the old country in his speech, which did nothing to assist him in avoiding corn or any other food that he intensely disliked. Sometimes, waitresses found it difficult to understand what he had ordered or thought they had understood when obviously they had not. On one of these occasions, we had decided to go to a restaurant noted for its buffet meals, in addition to other fine dining options. After perusing the menu, Alan announced that he would have the “boo-phay” while I opted for the roast beef dinner. Before my husband could make his way to the buffet the waitress set a Labatt’s 50 at his place and asked what he would like to eat. Shocked, he informed her that he wanted the “boo-phay” not a beer. He was a teetotaller and considered beer a beverage fitting only to be served with turnips and corn on the cob.

His accent once again proved his nemesis on the day he left his desk at the Kingston Whig Standard for lunch at a nearby diner. When he ordered a hamburger “plain”, he told me the waitress misunderstood and asked if he wanted a hotdog. He repeated his order but again she failed to interpret it. Finally, on his third try, a woman standing behind him in line told the waitress she thought he might want a hamburger with nothing on it. Alan nodded, the waitress beamed and his lunch was served.

My husband’s most memorable experience in dining took place on a long ago day when we decided to get lunch at the Golden Arches. At the drive-thru I ordered a Big Mac with the works, while Alan asked for a chicken burger “with nothing on it”. When we arrived home and I started to remove our meals from the bag, I noticed something unusual about Alan’s burger. It was perfectly flat in appearance and had no weight. I lifted the top of the bun and found nothing inside it. When I informed my husband that his “just plain” burger was plainly invisible, he returned it to the bag and, properly indignant, drove back to the Golden Arches to seek justice.

When he arrived home, a short time later, with a chicken burger in his hand, I asked what had happened. I was told the manager had called the guilty server to the counter, shown her the empty bun and asked for an explanation. Not to be cowed by her superior, she protested that the customer was making a false accusation, for he had asked for his burger “plain, with nothing on it” and she had served it as ordered.

In time, Alan and I resolved his issues with ordering food by agreeing that he should give me his order and I would relay it to the waitress. I was rather smug about my superior command of the English language until the day his doctor’s office called and I took the message. I dutifully reported to my spouse that he was being scheduled for a colonoscopy. Disturbed by this unexpected news and wondering why his doctor had never told him about the need for this procedure, he was greatly relieved to subsequently learn that he was to have a cystoscopy instead. I was properly embarrassed by my faux pas and developed instant empathy with the waitress who had served a Labatt’s 50 to Mr. No Corn and his sidekick, Plain with Nothing on It.