A cultural question.
Do you eat alone at restaurants?
Ok, if not regularly, once in a while?
Are you an adult American or European or global urban dweller and you never did?
I ask because there is this survey game/meme going around to help you get to know people and say about yourself. You just say yes or no.
The list has stuff like:
Driven 100 mph
Ridden in a helicopter
Ridden a horse
Stayed in a hospital
Been snow skiing
Been to Disney World
Driven a stick shift
Been on a cruise
Been on TV
(all “yes” for me if anyone’s curious, but that wasn’t why I am sharing this).
And then, incongruously (to me):
Eat alone at a restaurant.
(It should be “Ate” to fit the pattern, but it’s the only one that isn’t past tense. Is that a signal?)
I am wondering about that question because I don’t know anyone who hasn’t done this AFAIK. I’ve done it at least 1000 times.
But even if someone got married at 18 or something and was kinda broke and always ate at home, at least once in a while there is a business or personal trip on a plane or keeping vigil at the hospital or someone stands you up for a lunch date or … so many things. I mean, never went to a diner alone at 3am? Or do you always make a new friend there to eat with?
It seems nearly impossible to me for a working class or above American over age 30 to not ever have eaten alone at a restaurant. Maybe if you’re Amish or really rural?
But the fact the question is there means people think it’s akin to riding in a helicopter or riding a horse. So I’m wrong. But I can’t figure out in what way I am wrong.
I think the first time I ate alone at a restaurant I was maybe 13 at the latest. I remember riding my bike for a slice at the local pizza parlor.
Certainly before age 16. By 17 with access to a car, going to get lunch alone because I felt like it and could get anything I pleased was a nice freedom. In college it was a monthly thing at least (usually weekly), and I don’t think I’ve gone more than three months in my adult life without doing it until the pandemic.
So what’s up?