Want to Go to Dinner? And The Anxiety Surrounding this Question.

When some friends ask if my husband and I would like to go to Dinner, it’s usually a two-sided response. 

On the one hand, Yes, great! Let’s get together and catch up and have a hell of a time. Let’s drink tons of wine, slide in our heels, and walk barefoot to the parking lot, if we can still walk at all, by that point. 

On the other hand, what time are we eating? AND Where are we eating? This is where the anxiety usually sets in. 

Now, I don’t want to keep blaming everything on age, but in this case, age has a lot to do with my reply to the invitation. Many people in Jamaica like to eat late. They say, Eight o’clock. Let’s meet for dinner around Eight o’clock! But Eight o’clock means Eight Twenty, with traffic, and then if you arrive at Eight Twenty, you don’t end up ordering until Eight Thirty. Depending on the restaurant and the crowd, that sometimes means you won’t actually begin eating until Nine Fifteen….and Nine Fifteen is unacceptable, because I have a pretty terrible side-affect of waiting too long to eat.

Truth is, I throw up.

As my Dad says, ‘Manda is a vomiter’. My body is extremely sensitive to…well, everything….and it only gets more sensitive with age. Normally, I eat dinner between Six and Seven. Usually closer to Six. If I force myself to wait, I will inevitably begin to throw up.

Don’t believe me? Ask my husband how many times I’ve thrown up in his car, on the way to a restaurant, after being stuck in unexpected traffic for too long. 

TMI? Perhaps, but it’s a fact. And by Nine-Fifteen, I’d definitely be back at home, lying in bed, while Matthew curses at me, on his way back inside to get another bottle of Disinfectant Wipes for his dashboard. 

I know what you’re gonna say: Why not just eat a snack BEFORE you go out to dinner? This only messes everything up worse. If I snack before, I barely eat anything at dinner, then about fifteen minutes after dinner, I have to stop at BURGER KING (much worse than Pita Grill), and eat a Number Four. True, this equation, does not involve throwing up, but it leads to other weight-related complications. I’m pretty sure that Burger King never leaves my system, if you get my drift….

And the second question is of course, what restaurant?

The type of food has a lot to do with how I’m going to feel the next day. For example, Indian food gives me an Indian Food Hang Over. It used to be my favorite thing to eat for dinner, and now, if I eat Indian, the entire next day I feel as if everyone around me is on the moving sidewalk at the airport, and I’m struggling to keep pace. Or how about Sushi? Sushi always sounds good, but fifteen minutes after we leave the restaurant, I’m starving again, and we have to stop at Pita Grill (Still better than Burger King, at least), where I totally shatter my daily caloric intake. 

Or maybe someone will say: how about we try a NEW place that just opened?

This sends a shudder down my spine. A New Place? How do I know their kitchen can manage the influx of orders that a “NEW” place in Kingston, is sure to receive on a Saturday night? We could be waiting until midnight before we get any food. By midnight I would’ve thrown up about four times!

And what do I order? I know what I order at every restaurant in Kingston. It’s taken me years to come up with this very extensive list. Why should I just throw that kind of research out the window on a whim, because you want to try a NEW place?

And how do I know the NEW place is clean? I’ve had food poisoning before, and I don’t wish to have it EVER AGAIN!

It’s simply too much, so half the time, I’m forced to decline such invitations, if the answers are not: China Express at Seven on the dot!

This may be another reason why I don’t have that many friends…..

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