Recently I was lambasted for decrying the lovely buffet institution known as Golden Corral. It’s fair. I’m not an elitist about a lot of things, but I cannot stand that place. This weekend is the double whammy of my father-in-law’s birthday and father’s day. Now, earlier in the week, my wife had asked him where he wanted to go, and he said “Oh, I don’t know. IHOP is good. Your mother likes it.” 

My wife could have clapped her yap and we would have been safe.

Instead she said “Well, it’s your birthday. Let’s go where you want to go.” She has since realized the error of her ways.

Anyway, I’m going to digress a minute. My friend Rhys has become quite the shutterbug since his backpack trip around the world. He likes to take pictures almost everywhere he goes. I really wish I would have had him with me tonight.

Sitting at a table were a morbidly obese mother, her morbidly obese husband, and their morbidly obese son. He had a fistful of french fries off his plate, and was eating them out of said fist. His porky fingers squeezing them so tight that they were splintering. The dad was eating something. I wish I could say what, but he had covered everything on his plate with ketchup.

Everything.

It looked like he was eating some vile tomato pudding. The mother was the worst of all, though. She had decided to eat with one hand and play Vampire Wars on her netbook in Golden Corral with her family right in front of her.

I don’t understand this. I’m no proponent of the nuclear family, but this was insane. When did something like this become ok?

What made it worse was as I was walking by, I noticed the mom had ran out of…. whatever it is you run out of playing Vampire Wars, and then switched over to Runescape. I only know Vampire Wars from all the annoying Facebook apps I get spammed at me. Just now I searched out Runescape and saw it was a free online MMORPG.

I’m stunned that she would rather play as some fantasy online character, than eat with her family.

I hate Golden Corral.