For years, I’ve told people I’m not a club person. I don’t mean a nightclub—though I’m not really a nightclub person either—but exclusive clubs people join. I like to have fun and socialize as much as the next person, provided the next person is sitting at least one table over.
I also like to fly under the radar and mind my own business. I don’t need others to know what I’m up to, where I’m going, or who I’m with. I’ll tell you in my own time, if I feel like it.
That’s probably why I’ve never been a regular anywhere.
In fact, the idea of going to a bar where everyone knows my name is a nightmare. To be fair, the Cheers theme says, “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.”
Sometimes.
Well, I have been a regular at two places. For about a decade, Son, Daughter, and I went to the same gelateria for an after-school Friday ice cream. I suppose that made us regulars. But they never knew our names, let alone our favourite flavours, and that was fine with me.
The other place was a soup shop around the corner from the gelateria. Many a Friday, I’d drive to town early to avoid the afternoon highway traffic, park near the school, buy a magazine at the newsstand, and walk up the hill to that little soup-and-sandwich place.
And they had the best soups: Mexican corn soup, chili, something else and something elses. You can guess—I always had the Mexican corn soup. I’d sit outside, work for an hour or two, pick up the kids, get ice cream, and start the weekend.
When Daughter left for high school, our gelato trips ended, and with them, my Mexican corn soup afternoons.
Until today.
I hadn’t planned on soup. I was in town to meet a friend for coffee two blocks from the school where our daughters were once classmates. Afterwards, I started toward the subway, but passing the newsstand, I stopped to see if they’d got any new magazines since my last visit. And indeed, they did !I stuffed them in my bag, took one determined step toward the station, when a voice in my head whispered,
Sooooooup.
“Pardon me?” I said.
Soup, señor?
I turned and walked up the hill, simply curious to see if the soup place was still there. It was. I went in—not hungry, just wanting to see if they still made soup, or whether it had become yet another coffeeshop with baristas and cappuccinos and overpriced, oversized cinnamon buns.
The moment I saw the soup menu, a singsong voice called from behind the counter.
“How are you? So nice to see you!” said the lady whose name I don’t know. She doesn’t know mine either.
I told her it had been three years since my last visit because my daughter no longer went to school nearby. She smiled and said she understood.
“What would you like?” she asked.
“Mexican corn soup, please,” I said without glancing at the menu, and reached for the soup cup.
She beamed at me, genuinely happy to see me.
“Anything else?”
“No, no, that’s fine.” I paid, reached down to open a drawer for a spoon, but it wouldn’t open. She leaned over the counter and pointed at the drawer next to it.
“Ha ha, it’s been too long,” I said. “I forgot where the spoons were.”
Although I’m pretty sure they moved them.
We laughed, and it was nice. It was the exact right amount of familiarity. Warm, but not intrusive.
Maybe I’m getting soft. Maybe it’s the warm weather.
The soup was excellent.
