Earlier I regaled you with the tale of our weekend getaway to St. Louis to see Celtic Woman. At the time I hinted of a story to come surrounding our pre-show meal and with no further ado: The Tale of a Donkey and Fine-Dining (or, An Ass goes out to Eat).
Not knowing the city of St. Louis, Mary and I opted to eat at one of only 2 restaurants in the immediate vicinity of Fox Theatre. We chose Gary’s. Gary’s appeared to be a slightly upscale jazz club designed to maximize every bit of its small space. Consequently tables were very close together. Close enough that, in reality, you were seated with other people rather than next to them. We had the good fortune of being seated at the table with the Donkey of our tale and his date. This couple appeared to be in their 50’s, well-dressed, and wealthy. The date in question was an attractive lady who did not appear to be the sort of woman who needed to settle with just any old donkey. There was nothing particularly eye catching about this donkey.
Throughout our 45 minutes of fine dining we were witness to the most obvious case of verbal abuse that I have ever seen. And I work in the mental health profession! Despite our practically sitting in these people’s laps he berated and abused her through the entire meal. He berated her about the way that her children treated her, he went on a tirade concerning how he would walk out of a fancy restaurant were the owners to allow someone in that didn’t meet up to his dress code standards for said restaurant….at one point, trying to change the subject, she asked him if he had a tie tack. His braying response was “A tie tack? You tell me what you think a tie tack is!”, insinuating that he and he alone knew the proper definition of a tie tack.
I’m in no way doing this story justice, because he was terrible. I have never been witness in person to a man treating a woman so poorly for such a long period of time in my life. Throughout the meal she pleaded with him to change the subject from whatever it was he was railing about at the time and when he would finally acquiesce he would then put her down in relation to the new subject of conversation. She also spent a great deal of time complementing him in an effort to appease him. It almost put me off my feed. I haven’t wanted to punch someone in the face so much in a long, long time. Like the soldier caught by the bumbling constable in the Branaugh version of Much Ado About Nothing I wanted to get up and scream “YOU ARE AN ASS!!!!”
The only lesson of this tale can be, ladies, DO NOT ever, ever settle for a donkey for a companion. They may be a wealthy donkey and may get dressed up in fine clothes but at the end of the day they are nothing but an ass.
On a lighter note, when returning from St. Louis we stopped in Columbia to pick up Tori and visit with our niece and nephew, Haley and Elijah. Columbia is home to what looked like a very cool public library. Being book fanatics Mary and I were dying to get inside so we took the kids to the library to exchange their books. The Daniel Boone Regional Library is amazing.
This library is conducive to spending time and experiencing books. It is 3 floors with the entire first floor devoted to media and to the children’s section.
The children’s area was decorated and arranged to draw children in and to accentuate the joy that is reading. Wonderful, funky, comfy chairs were everywhere and they had great, creative arrangements of the new books that were available. They also had very modern self-checkout machines in which the kids scanned their books and swiped their library cards ala’ the self service lanes at Wal-Mart.
Freebies were available throughout the floor and I was quick to pick up these bookmarks.
The upper floors were devoted to all the other things you would expect at a library including warm, inviting and stylishly decorated study areas.
More pictures of the library can be found here.
Despite my niece and nephew’s report that it “wasn’t that big inside” we were all suitably impressed and I for one am quite jealous and ready to move to Columbia.
It was a wonderful end to our mini-vacation, spending time with the kids and encouraging the joy of reading…plus there were no signs of donkeys anywhere.
When they re-vamped the library here in my hometown, they completely wrecked it, including the children’s section. It’s sterile now.
Maybe I’ll move there.
Ah donkey tales. We seem connected these days, eh…!
Yes, but your donkey tale is a cute one, as opposed to mine!
I love my dad SOOO much and he is a good, calm man now but that is how he treated my mom my entire childhood and I feel shaky thinking about it. I was a very nervous feeling child. It’s humiliating and embarrassing and unpeaceful.
I was beside myself feeling sorry for this woman but also wondering what it is that makes women stay with men like this. I understand it on some levels since I work with people like this but on other levels it just seems unfathomable that someone would allow themselves to be treated in such a fashion.
Ooooh, I love the Elijah Wood one!
And I hate donkeys 😉
I figured you’d like the bookmarks, Janet.
Mary told us about your dining companions when we had dinner the other night. If he is willing to speak to hear that way in public, what must he say to her in private?
Wow, Carl, I couldn’t finish that section without daydreaming how absolutely great it would be to go all Brad Pitt/Fight Club on the guy. You know, real loud, rough the guy up bad, get EVERYONE’s attention, force him to apologize to his wife or get consecutive punches in the face.
I’m sorry, but I would have sinned that night. Public disrespect to women drives me out of my mind.
“Ma’am, you can do better that this sack of sh%# if you were blind folded and counted eenie-meenie-miney!”
That library sounds a lot nicer than the one where I work.
Course mine is for a college so no fiction collection, and no children’s section 🙂
Mary works at a college library as well. No fiction but she has access to other regional libraries so she can track down and check out anything through her library which is great. I recently read 2 out of print, hard to find books that she was able to get.
I hear you Rob! He got up at one point and went to the restroom and I couldn’t make eye contact with the woman because I was afraid of what I might say.
Rob, I like your idea. It sounds so satisfying to smash in the face of someone like that. And since I work in mental health also, I hear stories like this every day – and much worse. Women (or men, which is much rarer) won’t leave if they don’t believe they deserve better, which is very sad in itself. Carl. that picture of the arch looks much bigger and scarier than I remember. I promised to go up in it in November. My, aren’t I excited!
I wish we would’ve had time to go up in it. It was very impressive standing below it and the park which surrounds it is beautiful. The tree-lined walking paths are wonderful.
I think the view from up there will be fantastic. And I don’t get to take any physical risks anymore that were always such a high.
That library looks great. I can’t imagine a kid not wanting to read after visiting.
Sorry about your donkey. I can’t understand why some people feel like they must behave like asses! I’m curious how was the jazz or food. Was anything redeeming about the resturant. You didn’t mention either above. On a positive note you didn’t happen to see them at the Celtic Women performance right?
Actually they walked in right in front of us and I had started to say something about him when I noticed them.
The food wasn’t that great…it was okay but not anything special and they had instruments set up and a small stage area but no live music that early in the evening.
it’s amusing how tales of donkeys always end up being parables of a sort…
alas, tis true…
I probably would have said something to the ASS knowing me & my history of speaking my mind in public places and embarrassing my husband!! Or, I would have “accidentally” spilt my water all over him.
Off the subject………thanks again for the fun afternoon of playing games. Your abundance of “we can’t believe you know that answer” knowledge, never ceases to amaze me. Thanks also for the food, good laughs, dancing & singing.
My vast knowledge of trivial details didn’t prevent you, Mike and Tori from coming from ridiculously far behind and beating us at Trivial Pursuit….ah, well….
That is so sad. Co-Dependency at it’s worst. Poor woman. Hopefully she spit in his soup when he went to the rest-room.
mg
I wish she would’ve….or better yet I wish she would’ve spiked his drink while he was gone. Unfortunately all she managed to do was offer a very cheerful “here’s the handsome man” comment to him as he returned. What makes this whole thing that much worse is that he was by no means handsome…but of course viewing people through the eyes of money most likely improved his looks.
Saw some of Celtic Women’s concert on PBS last night. They are amazing.
I would love to go see them but, the only way u can get tickets here is to donate to PBS. They want 250 dollars US for a pair!!!
Thats outragous..
I just love libraries. I am such a bibliophile I could live quite happily with books for company.
Sorry to hear about your unsavory dinner companion, but you do have a knack for alternative titles, so that must be a comfort to you.
$250! It was significantly less than that for our donation to PBS….almost half less. And we got 2 tickets, a CD and DVD. Guess each PBS station has the right to set their own donation amounts.
I love libraries as well Jay, just don’t utilize them as much as I need to because I’m a bit of a procurer…I love going in to bookstores and the smell and feel of new books is a bit addicting really.
I am determined after this latest visit to use the library more often and even managed to find my library card.
Glad you are liking Clannad. I took YOUR suggestion and TiVO’d the Celtic Women on our local PBS station. Can’t wait to watch!
Hope you enjoy it, you’ll have to let us know.
I went to the Celtic Woman web site to listen to some of their music- I really liked it!! Of course I love that haunting sound. This kind of music reminds me of Ireland etc. I also like Brule for their Indian heritage. I also like Yanni. All these artists put alot of effort into their music. Wish we could take in one of those concerts!!! The theater was awesome too.
I had no idea you like those groups, mamma! I learn something new everyday! 🙂 And haunting is a good description as that is the quality I too like most with this type of music.