The Perils of Taking Food From Friends

Today I had a challenging "taking" experience and it was so unexpected because it involves my friend Lauren Farwell who is one of the most peace loving, vegetarian, PhD in Psychology-getting people I know.

This is Lauren:

Doesn't she look sweet?  This is Lauren at our favorite restaurant Tan My (best Vietnamese Pho in Austin) before we started eating.

I ordered my usual Pho: brisket and noodles in beef broth. She got shrimp in chicken broth.  My soup was delicious but, boy did her shrimp look good.  After awhile I said I would like to take a shrimp from her soup.  Before she could respond I reached over with my chopsticks and took 1 little shrimp out of her soup.

And that is when all hell broke loose.

Lauren grabbed the hot sauce container that you see in the photo above and squirted me in the eyes while simultaneously grabbing my chop sticks and ripping them out of my hands.  The flimsy little napkins they have at Tan My are no match for a quart of hot sauce and sadly for me I had forgotten the large cloth napkin I usually bring to lunch.  Lauren kicked my chair out from under me and while I was writhing on the floor in pain and trying to wipe the hot sauce out of my eyes Lauren flipped me onto my stomach and put both her knees into my back. Then she started smashing my face into the floor.

The worst part of this, from the restaurant's perspective, is that there were several small children in the restaurant at the time.  They don't need to see this kind of violence.  At this point I just started sobbing uncontrollably and offering to give Lauren all my money, the extra mints I keep in my purse, and even my shoes.  I think I may have even offered give her Matt & Stephanie's son Cash but I don't remember....I would have promised her anything to make it stop.

I think my screams of pain mixed with the voices of crying Asian children finally broke Lauren out of the trance she had fallen into.  Lauren stopped rubbing my face into the grimy linoleum long enough to lean close to my ear and whisper, "No stealing my food".  I whimpered that I would never "take" her food again and hoped I would regain sight in my right eye.

Lauren seemed to feel bad about the ninja-like fury she launched on me and she helped me get up from the floor.  I think my ribs are just bruised and my black eyes should heal in a week or so.  But I think that hot sauce may have actually blinded me in one eye. I guess it's OK I can still mostly see out of the other one.

Needless to say the proprietors of Tan My asked us to leave but they were kind enough to pack our soup to go.  The strange thing is that Lauren didn't seem at all upset with me as she walked and I limped out of the restaurant. She told me that when someone steals her food it is a "trigger" that brings back memories of when she was a homeless child living on nothing but scraps of sushi, foie gras, and french bread on the streets of Malibu, CA.  I now know not to do things to trigger her catlike reflexes and Ninja training.  No hard feelings on my part - that episode was certainly my fault.

I think we are getting together for lunch again in a couple of weeks and it turns out she is moving into my neighborhood - I hope my body heals enough to go to her housewarming party.