When I was a freshman in high school, everyone thought I was a senior. When I was a freshman in college, everyone thought I was a graduating transfer student. It figures, then, that now that I'm 23, when I take two thirteen year old girls to Pizza Hut, the staff labours under the delusion that we're high schoolers.
It was staff meeting night, as it were. I needed a chance to work out a game plan with Hannah and Sarah that didn't involve half a dozen shrieking kids. Not that we got a whole lot really accomplished, but from their point of view, any time you get to go anyplace with someone not immediately related to you is always a plus when you're under fifteen.
It's sad to say that those two are probably my two best friends in town right now. Hello, yes, I need a peer group. Then again, what else is new, I've never had a peer group.
I'm also glad to say that I didn't skimp the pizza guy on the tip. I am an unintentionally horrible tipper. I mean this from my point of view.
My high school had a pizza place literally across the street, and when we'd be afterschool for rehearsals we'd order pizza. A medium one topping is like, eight bucks. I'd routinely give the delivery guys twenties and tell them to keep the change. My friends were horrified, "The pizza place is across the street!"
Well, yes, but across the street meant walking half a block, because it was located across the street at the back of the school. There are plenty of pizza places that won't deliver in a two block radius around the building because they figure you can walk down and pick it up. Also, we were asking them to deliver to a school, which is a pretty big risk because high school kids are notorious pizza orderers but not pizza payers for (if that makes sense). Additionally, the pizza guy had to come find you, because the office wouldn't hold pizzas, and if you were in make-up by the time it got there, you had to find somebody else willing to be you.
Additionally, the one and only time I was ever in a Planet Hollywood was in Dallas. (Trust me, this relates to tipping.) It was on the orchestra/band trip my freshman year.
That was a weird trip anyway. The only music related thing we did was go see the Dallas Symphony. Not exactly the last word in symphonies. Other than that, we went to the Texas Book Depository and, as well as a science museum geared for the K-5 crowd and watched an IMAX movie (this was before real movies were realised on IMAX, so you got to watch fish), as well as the trip to 6 Flags. It was a weekend, and we didn't miss any school. The orchestra was invited to go simply because the band didn't have enough people going and they needed to fill up seats on the bus.
The day we arrived in town (we drove all night and arrived about mid-day), they dumped us all off in a parking lot and told us to go find lunch. Looking at Google Maps now, I find that it's just up the street from the Grassy Knoll, and this must be the area called the West End Market Place, but at the time I didn't know that. All we knew was we had to get off the bus and find food and return to the bus two hours later. The first thing my friend Heather and I saw was the Planet Hollywood sign, so we went there.
We were the only people in the place. Literally. I can understand why they closed most of them, but I can't understand how that particular one managed to stay open for two more years. We were there fall of 98; Google proves that it was Sept. 2000 when the Dallas restaraunt finally closed.
Anyway, we were there. Our waiter found out we were from Iowa and must've assumed we were a couple of hick Midwestern tourist schoolkids who'd be dazzled by anyone who had met anyone famous. (Not really.) He sat down and talked to us the entire time about all the famous people he'd met. In reality, we just wanted to go someplace where we figured we could get a hamburger (an eight dollar hamburger!). It was kinda sad, because we both just really wanted the guy to go away and stop talking about Ahnold (the only "star" I can remember the guy mentioning now).
We discovered when he finally left and it was time to pay that we could both of us almost cover the cost. I don't think it even occured to Heather to leave a tip. It occured to me and I didn't know what to do, because I realised that this guy hadn't sat there for almost forty minutes with us because he was just bored. He was expecting this to pay off.
It didn't. I think I ended up leaving him my little pile of change, and have felt vaugely guilty about this ever since. Less than a dollar of change was not appropriate tip for probably a $27 bill beween the two of us and his undivided attention. I just kinda hope that he did put us down as a couple of ignorant school kids and never thought anything to badly of us.
Looking a little more into that trip to Dallas, I gather the museum we went to was called The Science Place, and is now The Children's Museum in the Museum of Nature and Science. It's been a long time since I got genuinely excited about a science museum. These places look like they've got a lot of money invested in them, but it all must go to the planet-arium (thank you South Park for making me pronounce it that way) and the IMAX, because I don't see it anyplace else.
I've seen a lot of Zoom and a lot of 3-2-1 Contact. When I go to a science museum, I expect to be exposed to a living, breathing version of the magazines, and instead, they tend to be kinda, well, lame for anyone over the age of about seven.
I was always one of those kids who was totally unimpressed by the baking soda volcano. That wasn't how a volcano worked, why couldn't we do something to re-create a volcano a little more closely? Like, I dunno, a potato in the microwave. In fact, why not put lots of unorthodox stuff in the microwave?
I never did any of this stuff, because I would be dead now had I tried most of it. (Not just in an experiment-gone-wrong kinda way, but also in a parents-discovering-me kinda way.) I was, however, excited to watch Adam and Jamie put the alumunium foil in the microwave on Mythbusters. Yeah, that's what I want. I want science museums to be more like Mythbusters. Explosions? Dropping heavy things from great heights? Heating things that shouldn't be heated? Oh yeah, now that's science.
Maybe it shouldn't bother me so much that I'm being mistaken for a high schooler. At least they think I'm that old.