Table for Three

Last night I ate dinner in the real world. Everything's relative, of course, and I do recognize the real world is a bit less well-heeled than most places on the north side of Chicago.

But to me, for all practical purposes, the real world is anywhere but here, here being deep dark suburbia, specifically my little corner of it. The real world, last night, was a funky restaurant in the fringes of a slightly offbeat, youthful neighborhood in Chicago, where there were folks of all colors and ages and types of attire. On the menu, there was no chopped salad from which one could request all good stuff omitted, nothing that afforded all that much opportunity for brutal modification.

It struck me that there were lots of tables of three. In the "real world," people don't automatically fall into neat couplets; it's okay to be unattached. Sure, there were plenty of well matched pairs, but there were just as many odd-numbered configurations. Saturday night belongs to everyone in the real world. If I was the third wheel for my friend and her husband, I was certainly not alone. Refreshing.

My friend looked over at a table of two young couples. "That used to be us," she remarked. Was it? They looked so happy, so self-assured. I can't remember feeling that way when I was their age. Actually, to me they looked so young, so wet behind the ears, I wondered what they could possibly have to talk about. A lot, I suppose, since not once did their table fall silent the way ours did on a somewhat regular basis. Well, I'm sure what they had to say couldn't have been that important. I wanted to go over and tell them to enjoy it while they could, because this moment, and so many others like it, would pass very quickly and careers and marriage and child rearing would take their toll and before they knew it they would be just like us. But I decided it would be mean spirited to tell them all that, so I stayed where I was.

This morning, when I took Manny for an early morning walk, the neighborhood seemed even more unreal than usual. Whether something was missing or something had been added I can't say; all I know is it sent a chill up my spine as a strolled through the suddenly surreal streets. My legs started to shake, my breathing became shallow. I haven't yet broken out in hives, but I'm guessing it's only a matter of time. Maybe I'm just allergic to this place.

It made me want to go downtown again, soon. Where change happens so regularly nobody even notices. Where the restaurants and the streets and the people form an erratic mosaic, and slight changes in the atmosphere don't shake everything up. Real? Who knows. But it's not here.