psyched to eat out

basically, my mom just called to tell me she received an olive garden gift card. "would i like to have lunch with her today?" yeah. sure. and since she lives an hour outside of albuquerque, i have the perfect amount of time to google search "OLIVE GARDEN" and enlighten you.






olive garden is the most succinct explanation to the question "darlin', how do ya reckon we still in credit card debt?" growing up in the country, just outside of an already very small city, and then moving my independent little ass into said city, i've seen the downsides of both cultures. and by far, the worst trait to be cultivated from either culture is the idea of OLIVE GARDEN.

i swear to god the only people eating at olive garden right now are 1) visiting midwesterners and 2) country folk. see, in each and every small town outside of albuquerque, there sits two to four local restaurants. by local restaurants i mean liquor store/diner. and by that i mean, the eatery you go after you get out of jail for beating your wife. "hick wife beater" is an actual clique. like, whether or not they actually beat their wives and kids, many country folks will dress this way. anyway.

so, say you live in Small Town, New Mexico and you save up some cash to eat out *snicker *snicker *guff-AW! (the joke here is that country folk don't save money for eating out!! they spend on a whim. remember? credit card debt? keep up!)

so it's friday, PAYDAY, and you want to treat ma and the four kiddies to a nice dinner. where do you go? Wife Beater Diner is a little too ordinary. we want a taste of that high class life we see so much of on heroes. i know! LET'S GO INTO TOWN!!! yay! yeah! so they get into the car and drive into albuquerque.

believe it or not, the Small Town Family™ will choose the eating establishment based on its proximity to the interstate. true story. quick, psych grad student, research this for me!

Olive Garden is smart in that it sits on the side of the highway and offers a real italian experience™. the crumbled rock wall exterior, framed artwork of grapes, SHRIMP SCAMPI! it's oh so fancy. and the weird thing is that no one tells them that this is the opposite of fancy. it's an overpriced meal. it's LOGISTICALLY smarter to eat out at burger king.

look, i'm being an asshole here because i was constantly fighting an upstream battle amongst my own Small Town country folk. my reptilian brain told me that OLIVE GARDEN was for strange commerical loving clones, but try being that one person who doesn't LUV their tour of italy plate. anyhow, despite all this, i'm gonna put on my repressed housewife dress and enjoy their endless breadstick basket with the rest of 'em.

NOTE: and of course, mis papas are exempt from this country folk story bc we didn't fully grow up as country folk. and also they're educated and income-technically upper middle class. and that organic garden thingy. the end.