In exemplum (purely hypothetical): Ross and I are treated to dinner by a guest, lets call him John F. Mango from Texas. We do not deserve this treat, and knowing that I am by no means entitled to it, I make a note to be outwardly thankful and make sure I show I am enjoying myself and my dinner. I am told to pick a restaurant. I choose Ichiban after some consultation. it is made very clear from the beginning of the dinner that I am planning to save room for dessert, as they have delicious banana tempura with ice cream (mmmm/slash fist-shaking at the sky at remembering the, um, hypothetical, deliciousness stolen from me). I note this aloud on several occasions throughout dinner. Ross does as well, as he has decided on a similar plan. We have also been told on the outset by Mr. Mango to go ahead and order whatever we want, get the 11 course meal if we want (we dont). So dinner goes well, I eat a delicious meal while saving plenty of room to comfortably eat dessert, and, finishing rather earlier than Mr. Mango who gets a large portion not intending to have dessert, sit and look forward to my favorite part, dessert.
The whole next bit is (hypothetically) a blur: the waitress comes. What do we want for dessert? Ross wants banana tempura ice cream (at my suggestion). I, too, will have the banana tempura ice cream. Okay. She turns to go. Wait, Mr. Mango, too, will have an order of banana tempura ice cream. Fine by me until...
WAITRESS: Are you sure? They're pretty big, you might want to think about two.
AMANDA: slow motion look of anguish in the direction of the overly helpful waitress
MR.MANGO: Oh, okay we'll have two then
exit waitress
NOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I dont know what the conversation was between the exit of the overly helpful waitress and the arrival of the dessert. My head was spinning trying to maintain a pleasant of blank facade while trying to maintain optimism inside. Maybe the desserts are bigger than the past. Maybe by some miracle a tiny Japanese waitress has a heartier dessert appetite than I and actually knows what a large dessert means. Molten Lava cake at chilis is a large dessert, easily sharable. But if I save room for dessert, I can take one of those down myself. Or a great wall of chocolate, which incidentally I could go for right now having experienced insufficient dessert. Hypothetically. So, naturally it comes and, 3 not being easily divisible by 2, one is set between Ross and I, who both planned on dessert, and one is set in front of Mr. Mango. Dessert is like the art of the meal. It is not for sustenance, it is simply to make life better and more full. So you eat it slowly. Or you should. If you scarf it, you are wasting a lot of empty calories. As most guys do, these two scarf. I go ahead and eat slowly so as not to ruin the whole thing, and Ross is conscientious and stops after eating his half of the bowl. I have that to be grateful for. However, having stopped and set down his spoon, he is invited by Mr. Mango to enjoy some of his bowl. By the time I have finished my bit, there is no banana left in the other bowl, which is obscenely far away from my spoon anyway. I can do nothing but watch part of my portion slowly disappear while wishing I'd pretended I didnt want dessert to get crappy sonic ice cream cake instead of having something wonderful gobbled by others. I was mad that I came up with the idea for dessert and then didnt get my due. I was hungry. Basically, I was disappointed and grumpy. And so, thinking there was no other way to avoid being filled with irrational hate (cause thats another rule, don't have irrational hate) in the future in such circumstances, I made a rule. No splitting dessert. Fact: It is better to have never desserted at all than to have desserted and lost.
