The People's Republic of Bellevue?

My Teriyaki Joint Will Soon Become a 40 Story Condo

The realities of dining on at the same Teriyaki restaurant for an extended period of days is relatively impossible thanks to the simple properties of digestion. On this particular Wednesday, I was attempting the many variations of digestion at my favorite Teriyaki joint in Bellevue. As I masticated the sesame oil iceberg lettuce, subsequently prepared by an apt Korean staff, I thumbed through the morning edition of the Seattle P.I. an act prompting many nauseous feelings and a foreboding preview to the sects of digestion that awaited me. After inadvertently glaring into the op-ed section, the burn in my eyes and brain akin the effects of exposure to gamma intense radiation, I swiftly grasped for the hopeful fire extinguisher of the sports page as a balm for the burgeoning rage threatening the very base of my peace and dining experience. However, as if Seattle baseball is indefinitely cursed after failing to garner a world championship in the season of 2001 which featured a robust 116 wins, the day’s sports headline specified the pathetic ineptitude ingrained in this year’s offensive attack. At this juncture my angry chair was stacked high with phone books of rage nearly to the average height of the 250 construction cranes outsourced from China surrounding the diminutive strip mall where I dined. As if on cue, the torii katsu arrived, a blank canvas for every conceivable condiment on the already inadequately sized table. Teriyaki Bowl serves a high volume through out the day and the idea is to create a high turnover rate for customers and thus cash flow, so literally no room exists for eating and reading. In this environment of Laissez-Faire and tempered anarchy, my angst was subdued by the tonic of food and I reluctantly placed the sports page on the carpeted floor with a delicate throwing motion. In fact it is possible to eat and read, but the act of multitasking requires a surgeon’s dexterity with chopsticks and my inner wa remained tarnished by a myriad of thoughts.

As I dipped my first piece of chicken into the sauce receptacle, I noticed an attractive young woman around the age of twenty walking into the restaurant. I always play a game and attempt to predict what a customer will order as an indication of their look. I picked the veggie teriyaki special for this young vixen, however to my disappointment she never even reached the front counter. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that she hovered around one of the empty tables, casting a furtive glance around the room. As a mosquito targeting a major vein, the stealth like qualities of the insect overshadowed by a much deeper reality of pure evil, the young woman proceeded to pour the restaurant’s soy sauce into an empty cup she was carrying. After her act of theft, so deft and beautiful in the Machiavellian sense, she nonchalantly walked out of the door. I continued to stare at her with an intense glance and noticed that she entered the front door of the adjacent sub shop. I was completely flummoxed by the young lady’s actions. Immediately, the thought swept through my mind that there were roughly 200 things wrong with the recent events of indiscretion. The two businessmen who were situated in front of me and faced the scene of the crime, failed to register any semblance of a reaction. Stunned, I finished my meal in haste while pondering the spread of Stalinism and five year plans like wildfire in the temperate urban rainforests of the Northwest.

I opened the front door of the adjacent sub shop and searched the main restaurant area for the young offender. I spotted her almost immediately sitting with a couple of young men around her age. I swiftly approached the table with confidence and spoke in my radio voice. “Miss, I saw you in the teriyaki shop. Do you know what you did was wrong?” She looked at me as a knothole, the confusion spreading across her face in a non verbal “huh?” The two guys sat with smiles and nodded their heads.

“You are free to do what you want in life, but just remember your actions have consequences,” I ended my speech shrouded with the spirituality of a true mountain nomad, awaiting her reaction. Very meekly she uttered, “I’m sorry.” Satisfied, I left to contemplate the day’s events, the two young men laughing and berating her for her stupidity.

Speaking in legal terms, one is entitled to a restaurant’s condiments once they have made a purchase. In this non-verbal agreement the property of the restaurant in the common area takes on a meaning of ownership for the patron. Napkins, straws and disposable chopsticks fall under the same umbrella. Since the young woman made no purchase or verbal agreement with the patrons by simply asking for permission, her actions could technically be qualified as petty theft.

On the reaches of a thought experiment the young woman’s behavior possessed inclinations of oblivious sentiments and total lack of empathy. Whether the patterns in her mind were established by the home environment or societal norms are important questions. Did the young men at her table wager a dare or was her act a simple culmination of a sophomoric prank? On a philosophical level, does the young woman not adhere to the ideals of private property outside of her closet or her Jetta and are all women at a similar stage of development simply natural socialists? As a gender, women are far more inclined towards the ideals of sharing, equality and nurturing. I entertained these thoughts as I walked across the parking lot to my car until I was nearly flattened by a steam roller and decapitated by the sign girl as she practiced flipping between "stop" and "slow". Of course the workers were clearing the way to erect another crane.

Gazing back towards the sub shop, I noticed the front window reflected the obvious chaos of my current plight. The reality made brilliant and vivid by the early afternoon tempered sunlight. As if the properties of karma tilted imperceptibly save for the quantum realm, the face of the young thief was clearly visible next to the mirror of my reality. In the split screen of our worlds on one side I stood white with terror in the mild sunlight while on the other she laughed, the toothy and wry smile beaming with the realization that my near death experience served justice for a generation changing the world beyond recognition.