"Don't Complain, Wally"

I was at Burgers Bar on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn last Wednesday night. I only go there on Wednesday night. That's because I go to Weight Watchers on Wednesdays, which means that I can go there after my WW meeting and pig out, and have a whole week to be good and make up for it. I'm not sure if that logic makes any sense to anyone else but me, but I find it quite ingenious. So here's the thing about Burgers Bar: they have the best kosher burgers on the planet, IMHO*. Burgers Bar charges a lot more for their burgers than other kosher fast food joints do, but they taste like meat, and that seems to be a foreign concept to the other places, whose burgers generally taste like styrofoam. I chose that picture up there on the left (an ad for a new Burgers Bar opening in Israel) to show you what their burgers look like. And they actually do look like that! When was the last time you saw a burger that inviting that didn't come off your grill at last Labor Day's barbecue? Now, the question of just how kosher they are is for another blog at another time. Suffice it to say that there are those in my community who consider this emporium of bovine perfection to be below their impeccable kashruth standards.

As far as I can tell, there can be two reasons for this:

1. They can't believe anything that tastes this good can actually be kosher, and

2. Burgers Bar's propensity to change their rabbinical supervision

every twenty minutes or so.

As far as I'm concerned, ever since I found a gray hair in my burger that came from the rabbi's beard, I consider the place to be 1000% kosher. Also, even if it's not and I have to do time in purgatory as a result of my having partaken of this evil, mouth-watering delicacy, I think it'll probably be worth it, especially if I can bring along a few raw Burgers Bar patties that I can grill down where I'll be going**. I will now attempt to salvage the rest of this post from tumbling into more useless segues and/or tangents and get back to where I was going. I think it was Bayonne. No, probably not. I was going to discuss Wally*** and family. When I was leaving Burgers Bar after having my Wednesday Night Usual (house burger with BBQ sauce and Garlic Mayo and fries; don't get me started on their fries), I ran into Wally. He's a guy I've known for quite a while. I'd stop just short of calling him a friend; I'd say he falls into the "acquaintance" category. I like Wally, but I've always felt sorry for him. He's a sad-sack type of guy who never seems to catch a break. Although he's reasonably bright, he's married to a woman who I believe (along with many others who concur) is borderline, um, mentally challenged. I don't know if that's the proper PC appellation du jour (I believe "retarded" is no longer considered acceptable), but you get the idea. Wally was having trouble paying the mortgage on his Brooklyn home several years back, and he came up with what I thought at the time was a clever solution: he sold the house, bought one in New Jersey for a lot less money, paid off his mortgage and even had some money left. He was at Burgers Bar with his aforementioned spouse and one of his sons, who has apparently inherited his mom's penchant for smiling indiscriminately during a conversation, usually with his mouth open. Just to make conversation, I said, "How's it going, Wally?" An innocuous question if there ever was one. "Everything's going just the way everything in my miserable life has always gone." Oooooookay. this is gonna be a fun little chat, I thought. Then I suddenly fell prey to what I like to refer to as the "reformed smoker syndrome". There is a tendency among those who have kicked the habit to try and coax (read: badger) others to do the same. "Don't complain, Wally," I said. Don't complain? Why the heck not? The guy's miserable. Why shouldn't he complain? Just because I went through a near death experience which has changed my attitudes greatly, do I have the right to go around like a pollyanna-ish goody two-shoes telling people to be happy with their lot? Frankly, I don't know. But I can report with some degree of certainty that Wally, recipient of my unsolicited,cheerily banal platitude, did not particularly appreciate it.

His response was a grunt which, freely translated, meant

"bug off, you smiley-faced gadfly!". Well, I guess I've been called worse.

So...next time I encounter a buddy who expresses sentiments similar to Wally's,

do I just shut up and listen and try to be supportive?

I think it's a rhetorical question.

The elusive Banal Platitude.

                                           * IMHO = for you old folks who aren't familiar with texting lingo,

IMHO means "In my humble opinion."

**Just in case G-d is reading this: I'm just kidding.

*** Wally's not his real name.