Spent this past weekend in Wichita, helping my other parent move. Luckily, he was only moving to the east edge of town, not the eastern edge of the country; unluckily, my dad is just about the worst person to help move ever. Note to those who want to enlist people’s help moving, and don’t have any immediate family members around to bully into assistance: 1) DO communicate with helpers, especially when moving a large sofa, and tell them things like “I’m stopping now to pick my nose, all the weight of the sofa is on you! Ha!” or “heretofore I have been lackluster in my efforts, but now I am suddenly going to push really hard while you are backwards on stairs!”, 2) DON’T blame your helpers when you make them follow your crazy plans and your plans fail (e.g., attempting to navigate the sofa on a three-foot-tall dolly on a bumpy brick path in your weedy yard).

The other component of this was braving my father’s driving skills, which, as a heretical agnostic, had me supplicating for the mercy of Our Lord Jesus H. Christ more times than ever in my life: sudden U-turns in the middle of the road, turning left while in the right lane (!), not bothering to check those pesky blind spots, etc. And these incidents occured not when he was not driving the U-haul, but his normal car, a barely-operating jittery zombie of a machine, despite my no doubt irritating commentary: “this car might actually be rejected by the junkyard!” It’s not a matter of money or lack of other vehicular options; he has a perfectly nice, relatively new Toyota Camry that sits unused in one of his parking spaces because my stepmom doesn’t like to drive. Instead, he drives the clap-trap to work every day. I toyed with the idea of leaving it unlocked so that someone could steal it, but that would seriously anger my dad, who, for all his quirks, owns the house that I was staying in. At any rate, nobody in their right minds would want to steal that thing, not even to harvest for scrap metal.

(Are other people’s parents this crazy? Are they just hiding it very well, to make chiaroscuro and I look bad*? Anyone?)

After about eight hours of this, Dad rewarded our efforts by taking us out for fancy eatin’ at World Grill Buffet. Or World Buffet Grill, or Grill Buffet World; it has those multiple-word names that, despite being totally interchangeable, don’t quite make sense together. Now, I can’t stand Chinese buffets. They almost always punish my intestinal system, and the germ freak side of myself cannot abide by the fact that all this food has been sitting exposed for hours, within the easy reach of people who pick their nose and kids who drool and…euuurgh. Also, everything is either deep-fried, untrustworthy, or most likely, both.

I’m sure that I derived my culinary senses from my mother, who is an excellent cook, and furthermore, appreciates good cuisine (although she does like the Chinese buffets for the ubiquitous crab legs). My dad likes…well, my dad likes barbecue, though he can’t have any due to heart problems. The few times he cooked for us growing up consisted of stuff like Manwich and lima bean stew. Luckily, Mom did most of the cooking.

Now that I call Lawrence my home, I’ve dragged my father out to my favorite haunts, ranging from really nice places to hole-in-the-wall types, and it’s all been the same, merely ‘okay’ to him. My stepmom is even worse; she thinks she hates everything except Vietnamese and Chinese food, and won’t try new things except at gunpoint. I’m not even sure she actually likes most Vietnamese food, as she’s said she doesn’t like garlic (say whaaat?). The last time they visited, I pressed them to tell me what they wanted to eat, ignoring the standard insistence that I be the one to choose. To my surprise, my dad said he wanted spaghetti, maybe, or some pasta. Pasta? My dad? Uh, okay. I took them to a standard, inoffensive if nothing particularly spectacular, Olive-Garden-esque eatery, that offered the requested spaghetti; he didn’t even order the spaghetti, and neither of them ended up eating anything beyond a few bites of their food.

When I eat with my dad in Wichita, it’s been the same - mediocre Vietnamese restaurants only frequented by Americans, or Souper Salad (another buffet). Lately eating (out or otherwise) has been complicated by the fact that, due to an allergic skin reaction some time back in August, my dad has sworn off basically any meat but pork.

“Why pork?” I asked, confused as to how it could be excluded from the meat ban out of safety concerns, of all reasons.

“I have to eat some meat,” explained my dad. Apparently he’d eaten everything else but pork before his rash appeared.

“Are you sure it’s even a food reaction? Shouldn’t you get some sort of allergy test?” Yes, he will, but in the meantime, he won’t risk it. Ah well. One might question the wisdom of eschewing chicken, fish and beef in favor of pork for health reason; one might also question the relative healthiness of an establishment like a Chinese buffet, compared to a meal in a more reputable restaurant. One would be arguing with the wind, so I bit the bullet (or rather, fortune cookie) and went with them to World Buffet Grill Buffet World…whatever.

The first thing you see when you walk into a place such as the (insert word-combo here), the only thing you can’t help but see, is the enormous faux-Swarovski crystal ship, about half the size of an actual functioning boat, suspended from the tall ceiling. It glitters from the far-off shores of the crowded buffet lines, above the rushing tides of hungry people with greasy fingers and appetites. Complementing the glittering vessel are beacons of bejewelled sconces, inset into the towering, pine-trimmed walls. The eye cannot help but stare: this place is Bling City, capital of Flashy Casino-Type Eatery Land.

Navigating through the buffet sea was quite rough; I almost wrecked a couple of times, and was nearly hijacked by speeding children wielding crab claws. I managed to get some salmon and rice from the hibachi line; the guy overcooked my salmon and, as it appeared, undercooked the steak for the woman behind me. The salmon resembled hardtack; giving up, I braved the oceans once more and gathered three types of shrimp: shrimp sauteed with bell peppers, shrimp coated in black pepper with the tails still on, and popcorn shrimp. The first gave off the redolent aroma of lightly used gym socks, with sharp, pungent accents of the finest vintage window cleaner; the second type, despite the pepper, was rather bland and also not deveined. I ended up eating mostly the rice and popcorn shrimp (which, now that I think of it, was probably also not deveined, but oh well. Perhaps shrimp poop is safer to eat after deep-frying). I looked over at the plate in front of my stepmom, who, as I mentioned earlier, hates almost every type of food imaginable. She had some slimy lo-mein, and some slimy shrimp and broccoli, as well as french fries. Though typically whenever I’ve seen her eat, even her own food, she eats the amount that you might feed a small infant; currently she relished those fries as though she hadn’t had anything to eat in the past week.

“You like french fries?” I asked, astonished. She nodded emphatically, too busy chewing to vocalize her affirmation. I now know what to make whenever my dad and stepmom visit: lima bean stew and oven fries (I’ll fix something up for myself on the side in addition).

At the end of the evening, we left…the Crystal Ship, feeling full. My dad full of pork, my stepmom full of fries, and me, full of popcorn shrimp and rice. My digestive system did not die afterwards, so I will go ahead and call that voyage a success.

* - Just joshin’, I love my parents. Especially for the fact that they can just about out-crazy the rest of the planet