Last summer during a weekend of hiking in the Sierra Nevada with my best friend Tim, we found ourselves looking for a little nourishment before heading up into the mountains. We stopped at the unfortunately named ‘Morning Thunder Cafe’. I assumed the place was just a coffee house given its name, in fact, I seem to remember a type of highly caffeinated tea with the same name. I asked about this on the way in and Tim assured me (he had been there before) that the place was a restaurant and served breakfast only. I’m not a marketing expert, but surely the name ‘thunder’ should not be associated with breakfast materials. It conjures up images that should not be conjured. Maybe after eating there you would develop copious amounts of flatulence and your co-workers would chide you all day about where you had breakfast. Maybe it was more sinister and after a meal you would have to race home and endure long, generous bouts of Nicaraguan-style dysentery. We fobbed this off and decided to eat there anyway.
A pleasant teenage girl showed us to a table an announced that our waitress would be right with us. A moment later an enormous pair of breasts appeared at our table followed directly by their owner. “Hi, I’m Heather, I’ll be your server; can I bring you guys some coffee while you’re looking over the menu?” We were rendered speechless for a brief period of time, but managed, with some difficulty, to transmit a vague ratification to her query. “Cream and sugar?” Nodding.
After she left the table, we were reduced to childlike snickerings and odd noises. That we had both been simultaneously stricken with Tourette’s Syndrome was unsettling to say the least. I mentioned to Tim that our condition will probably be written up in The New England Journal of Medicine in an article entitled, ‘Spontaneous onset Tourette’s Syndrome in two adult males following abnormal visual stimulation.’ BITCH. Tim agreed with me and then flailed his arms wildly and yelled ASSHOLE. It should be pointed out that our symptoms were caused not by the sheer size of Heather’s ersatz boobs alone, but by the unnatural, near perfect hemispheric shape. The top part of her breasts poked through her pink v-neck sweater and formed impeccable spheroids. The sun freckles she had on her cleavage were stretched thin and were of corn flake size. It was as though a soccer ball had been bisected along its equator and the matching halves attached to Heather’s chest with appliqué nipples applied to the former poles. We argued about how one could produce such total symmetry. It was finally agreed that air pressure alone could only account for this architecture. Surely there had to be valves of some design that allowed her to control the pressure by adding or bleeding-off air as required. This was not about sex, this was an engineering question. Surgeons were out of the mix as only a team of highly trained pneumatic technicians who worked for Goodyear or Firestone could have pulled this off.
The giggling got worse and we tormented each other with acid comments designed to make the other break out in full-throated laughter. Tim asked if I thought there would be an auto insurance discount if you wore pre-deployed airbags while driving. Gasping. I told Tim that in a way Heather had ceased to exist as a person but now operated solely as a life-support system for her breasts. We laughed to a point where we thought we might be asked to leave the restaurant altogether. Just as I was presenting another zinger for Tim to choke on, Heather reappeared to take our order. I had just blurted out the words ‘blunt force trauma’ when she stepped to the table. Unable to completely stop, a couple of demi-laughs squirted out; we cleared our throats in slight embarrassment. “You guys ready to order?”
“Yes ma’am.” I said. And just to stay in character, and secretly hoping to get Tim to fall off his chair, I ordered a No. 2. But he didn’t get it.
Heather brought us our food and it was delightful. She turned out to be an excellent waitress and was attentive to our every need. We felt bad and a syrupy sense of shame flowed over both of us, so we over-tipped her to a point nearly criminal. We decided we liked Heather.
Random Marginalia From People On Lithium