Tasty Tuesday

“We’re running out of time!” Amy shouted, “Drive faster!”

“I’m already going nine miles an hour over the speed limit,” Mark said. “I refuse to go any faster.”

“But …,” she said, sounding panicked.

“If a state trooper stops us, we’ll certainly never make it so stop telling me to drive faster.”

Mark couldn’t understand the urgency. It wasn’t as if this would be their first time. And so what if they didn’t make it tonight? There’s always tomorrow. Of course it wouldn’t be the same, but they would still be there. 

“We’re never going to make it in time,” Amy said, leaning toward Mark so she could peek at the speedometer.

“Aren’t you the one who’s always so afraid of hitting a deer while we’re going too fast?” Mark asked.

“That’s beside the point,” she said, crossing her arms in front of her defiantly. 

It was all his fault, Amy thought. He’s the one who needed to look at one more car, then one more, then just one more. And he knew just about everyone in the tri-county area so, of course, he had to stop and talk to every person he saw and gather every little tidbit of information about what’s been happening in their lives since the last time they saw each other. As if that wasn’t enough, he had to talk to everyone who was looking at one of the cars he was thinking of buying. “Why do you prefer the Corvette over the Camaro?” “Would you go with a convertible again?” “Do you think that color will lower the trade-in value?”

Oh, please, she thought. Give me a break.

That was just at the car dealership. The movie theater was even worse. She thought they had decided on “Elvis,” but when they got to the theater Mark wasn’t sure he wanted to see another Tom Hanks movie. Nothing Amy said could convince him that it wasn’t really a Tom Hanks movie just because Tom Hanks was in it. She also couldn’t convince him that “Where the Crawdads Sing” was not a chick flick. She’d read the book so she tried to give him a condensed version of the plot, but he wasn’t buying it. His choice – after “Elvis” wasn’t his choice anymore – was “Jurassic World: Dominion.” As stubborn as he was being with “Where the Crawdads Sing,” she was being just as stubborn with the dinosaur movie. She didn’t like the first one – found it boring as a matter of fact – and had no desire to see any of the following Jurassic movies. Even Mark’s “But Jeff Goldblum is in it …” argument didn’t work. They finally decided on “Top Gun Maverick,” although they had decided when it first came out that they would rather wait until it came onto a streaming service to see it. 

Then there was the popcorn argument – the same popcorn argument they have every single time they go to a movie theater, which is one of the reasons they rarely go. She wanted extra butter. He wanted no butter. As usual, they compromised and got the regular, normal amount of butter the theater uses. Amy had suggested once – and only once – that they each get their own popcorn instead of sharing one and you’d think she suggested flying first class instead of coach or buying name brand toilet paper over store brand. The man was considering buying a $70,000 Corvette “just because,” Amy thought, but he was going to quibble over spending a few extra cents on toilet paper or a second box of popcorn.

She didn’t realize she was shaking her head as she was thinking, until Mark asked her why she was.

“It’s nothing,” she said.

“Great,” he said, rolling his eyes. “The ‘it’s nothing’ response. You must be angrier than I thought.”

“I’m not angry,” Amy said, although she really was. “I just want to get there.”

“We have plenty of time,” Mark said. “We’ll get there. Stop worrying.”

“I’m not worrying,” she said. “This isn’t something I would worry about. I’m not a sociopath. I just want to get there.”

“So you’ve mentioned,” Mark said. He reached over and patted her leg. “We are almost there, you know. It’ll be fine.”

For the briefest of moments she considered telling him to stop being so condescending but then gave him the benefit of the doubt, thinking that he was just trying to de-escalate the situation. After all, this wasn’t life or death. They would survive even if they didn’t get there on time.

“It’s just that I’ve been looking forward to this,” Amy said. “It might not be the most important thing in the world. Heck, it might even be one of the dumbest things in the world, but I really was looking forward to it and I’ll be disappointed if we miss it.”

“We won’t miss it,” Mark said. “And it’s not dumb.”

“It’s a little dumb,” Amy said, chuckling.

“Remember, you’re the one who said that.”

“I’ll remember,” she said, smiling. “But, as dumb as it is, you do get my point don’t you?

“There’s a point?” he asked.

She playfully punched his arm. 

“Yes, there’s a point,” she said. “You start thinking about something, then you start anticipating it, then you get your heart set on it. Then, when you think it might not happen after all, you can’t help but feel disappointed. So, although it’s not important in the whole scheme of things and we’ll survive if we don’t get there in time it’ll be a little depressing. Not “Prescribe me some Prozac” depressing, but it’ll make me sad.”

“Well, we’re almost there and,” he said, looking at the clock on the dashboard, “with plenty of time to spare.”

“I’m not sure fifteen minutes could be considered plenty, but at least it looks as if we’re going to make it.”

“If there’s not a line,” Mark said.

“Don’t even think that. Would there be a line at this time of night when the colleges aren’t in session?”

“You do realize that some kids who go away to college do come home for the summer, right?”

“But it’s not the same thing.”

“It’s a moot point anyway,” Mark said, pulling into the parking lot. “We’re here and there’s no line.”

“And it’s still open!”

“I told you we’d make it in time.”

“And since it’s before midnight, it’s still Taco Tuesday,” she said.

Mark and Amy got out of the car and held hands while making their way quickly to the front door of Tasty Taco. Just in time.