So I went out to eat the other night. I know, I know...I should just expect that it's not going to turn out right. But I'm ever hopeful. Silly me.

I'm a vegetarian. Down here in Cajun Country, this doesn't always work so well. At the restaurant, I decide to order a steak salad without the steak. Why? Because they don't even offer a salad without meat on it. So, it's a steak salad minus the steak. Simple, right?

Wrong.

The two other people at the table receive their food. I'm waiting. And waiting. And wondering. So I grab Pippy the waitress and ask her if there was a problem with my salad. She says that she'll go check on it. (One should wonder why she hadn't done this already, but I've learned not to ask "why" down here.) She comes back out a few minutes later and tells me that the cook hadn't made the salad because he didn't understand what I wanted. How was he supposed to make the salad? I explain that he should just make a regular salad AS IF he were going to put the steak on it, and stop just before the steak. She walks away to go explain this to the cook, and I turn to my friends and say, "did she really just ask me how to make a salad? and is she REALLY going back in there to explain it to the cook?"

I'm shaking my head, but my hopes aren't dashed yet. I know that sometimes my order confuses people; I don't understand why, but I know that it does. Now that it's been explained, I should have my food in just a minute. Sure enough, Pippy comes out a few minutes later carrying a nice, large dinner salad and sits it in front of me. My tummy grumbling with hunger, I pick up my fork and start to take a bite of

chicken. OH, PIPPY! She comes back over to the table and I point out that there is chicken in my steak-salad-minus-the-steak salad. She looks at me as if I am the confused one. She says yes there is chicken because I didn't want steak. I inquire as to whether there is normally chicken in a steak salad. Pippy says no. I ask why, then, it is in mine. Pippy says, "Because you didn't want steak."

I take a deep breath. Pippy, I wanted a salad with NO MEAT on it, not just NO STEAK. So if there are any other forms of dead carcasses in the kitchen, I don't want them on my salad, either. "So you don't want the chicken?" she says. NO. "And you don't want the steak?" NO. "Well, what do you want?' I want a salad, I say. A salad made with lettuce of some sort and vegetables. No steak, no chicken, no bacon, no ANY other kind of meat. Just the stuff that makes a salad A SALAD.

Pippy makes her way back to the kitchen again. My friends are holding their napkins against their mouths to keep from laughing outloud. Just as I'm telling them to hush it and finish their dinners, Pippy comes back out, empty handed, to say that the cook wants to know if I would like some ham in my salad.

Pippy...I don't want meat in my salad. None. At all! I'm a vegetarian.

"Oh," she says. Then stops. Then looks at me and says, " A vege-what?"

Sigh.