Of course I’ve had Artichoke before!

Just before I met MDW I went out with a woman who was a real piece of work. Not only was she a drunk, but she was a nasty drunk. In fact she was such a bitch that its amazing that I ever got married because at the breakdown of the relationship I made a solemn oath to myself that I would never date again. Two weeks later I met my wife but that’s another story (one that’s been partially told, I started this a long time ago).

Anyway, Terri (I’ll use her real name because she’s a bitch) came from LA too and her mother lived in Pasadena, so we drove down to visit for a few days. It only took a few minutes after meeting her mom to understand why Terri was such a bitch, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”. Her mother was even more of a piece of work than she was.

After a couple of days of constant jibes like “do you have running water in Australia?”, and “do you have cars or do you ride kangaroos?” I was starting to get pretty pissed off with the pair of them. Oh, the mother was a drunk too. So the day before we were to head back to SJ her mom says we should all go out for dinner. ‘We’ meant Terri, her mom and her brother plus the mom’s boyfriend (an ex-lineman for the Pittsburgh Steelers, fuck he was big!!) and the brother’s girlfriend.

They decide to go to the Brown Derby, there were four in LA but only one still remains, the one on Los Feliz. We order our meals, mine came with a whole artichoke (and a bowl of mayo). Terri’s mom says “have you ever had an artichoke before?” and by this time I was fed up with their crap, so I lied and retorted “what, do you think I’m a hillbilly or something?”.

OK, now I’m assuming that all of you have had artichokes before, but in case you haven’t let me explain one thing, you do not try to cut them open like you would a baked potato. I’m telling you, it took at least 10 minutes for everyone to stop laughing and 3 days for Terri to stop mentioning it (which was precisely how long it was before I told her it was time we went our separate ways).

Credit to whoever’s photos I’ve borrowed for this post. None of them are mine.