I tend to ask, “What would happen if…” quite often. The subject of the question is usually rather benign.What would happen if I tried to make it to work and back without filling the gas tank? (I should know the answer to that question, but I’m a slow learner.) What would happen if I went vegan for a month? What would happen if I skipped down the hall at work?
Other times, the questions have more dire consequences. What would happen if the sun didn’t rise tomorrow? What would happen if I put my finger in the hedge trimmer while it was on? (That answer to that one is nothing good.)
This past weekend I discovered the answer to one of my oldest “What would happen if…?” questions.
Saturday night some friends invited my wife and me to meet them at a local pizza place. It’s the sort of place that attracts a good crowd on a Saturday with fantastic pizza, a wide beer selection, and a fun atmosphere. We jumped at the invitation, even though we’d just had dinner with other friends at a more upscale restaurant with great pizza and beer.
(Really, can you ever have too much pizza and beer? I mean this rhetorically, as the answer is obviously yes. But you know what I mean.)
We sat with our friends and enjoyed a few beers. (Diet Coke for me, as I was driving. No need to find an answer to the question, “What would happen if I drove drunk?”) While we chatted I noticed that the people at the table next to us ordered a plate of buffalo wings. So I posed a question that frequently comes to mind when I’m at a restaurant, “What would happen if I just walked up to those people and ate some of their food?”
Usually this question leads to a few minutes of back-and-forth discussion, laughter at the ridiculousness of such an idea, and a decision that such an endeavor is just too risky/ uncomfortable/ stupid to try.
But then a friend said, “I’ve got twenty dollars for you if you do it.” Now wait a minute! I like twenty dollars as much as the next guy. And twenty dollars would have been enough to pay for the drinks my wife and I had consumed to that point. But is twenty dollars enough for me to walk up to people I don’t even know, take food from their table, and eat it?
I don’t think so.
However, another of our friends at the table spoke up and said, “I’ll do it. Will you pay me twenty dollars?” When our first friend agreed, the second friend took a few deep breaths to urge himself to action. He looked at the table next to us, then back to us, said something like, “I’m scared!” took another deep breath, looked at the table again…and did nothing.
Within a minute or two it became clear that he wasn’t going to be able to do it. The discomfort of the situation just proved too much. And with good reason. I mean we didn’t know those people, a guy and a girl, both in their mid-twenties. All we knew about them was that they liked buffalo wings. But just how territorial were they about their buffalo wings?
I had to find out.
I said, “I’ll do it,” and stood up from my chair, took a couple of steps toward the table, and my wife stepped in front of me. “You can’t do that!” she said. I assured her everything would be fine, and she stepped to the side.
The guy and the girl were sitting across from each other, the tray of buffalo wings between them. I walked up to their table, took a wing from the tray, said, “Sorry about this,” and proceeded to eat the entire thing while I stood next to them.
Luckily, the wing was boneless so I didn’t have to worry about what to do with the bone. I hadn’t thought about that beforehand, which might have been bad news. The wing was good though.
After I finished the wing I apologized to the couple, explained that my friend had dared me to do it, and turned to walk away.
Then I found the answer to my question.
As I turned to walk away, the woman picked up the tray of wings and handed them to me. “You can have them,” she said.
“I don’t want them,” I said. “I just wanted one. You eat them. I didn’t touch any of them except the one that I ate. They’re fine.”
“I’m not eating them,” she said. “You ruined them.”
“I didn’t ruin them. I didn’t even touch them. They’re all fine.” She didn’t buy my explanation though and insisted that I take the remaining twelve or so wings on the tray. I started to feel a little bit bad. I heard the people at my table laughing at my stunt, but this woman failed to see the humor. “How about this...I’ll take these wings and I’ll pay for new wings for you.”
“Okay,” she said.
Before I left the table, I apologized again and thanked the guy for not punching me in the face when I ate his wings. “He’s not the one you have to worry about punching you in the face,” the woman said.
I patted her on the shoulder, thanked her, and took a step back from the table just in case she changed her mind.
I ordered a new tray of twenty wings, and returned to my table. My friends hadn’t heard the conversation, so I relayed the details. They were surprised at her reaction, but appreciated the humor and outrageousness in my act.
A few minutes later I left to go to the bathroom, and when I came back my friends told me that the woman had turned around and questioned why I would do such a thing. They explained that we had been talking about it, that they dared me to do it, and that we hadn’t meant any harm in doing so. She suggested that my actions ruined her night, and that she no longer had an appetite.
Meanwhile, my friends and I ate their leftover wings.
Toward the end of the night, as we were ready to leave, I made sure that the replacement wings were charged to me, and paid for them with the twenty dollars my friend gave me for fulfilling the dare. As we left, we passed their table and I heard them talking to the manager and I heard the manager say that we should pay for both orders of wings, not just the replacement order.
I kept walking, but two of our friends—one of whom dared me—stopped and talked to the manager. They explained the situation and that we had bought a new order of wings after I “ruined” the first order. The manager replied with some not-so-kind words, and my friends left.
The whole episode can be summed up in one word: surprising. It’s surprising to me that I actually walked up to a stranger and ate food off of their plate, and it’s surprising that the people at the table reacted that way, and it’s surprising that the manager would suggest that we pay for both orders of wings.
There’s a television show called Impractical Jokers in which four friends do all sorts of outrageous things. On one episode they went to a Chinese restaurant and ate from a stranger’s plate without saying anything. Their experience went better than mine.
I’ve often wondered how I’d react if someone came and ate from my plate. And I can honestly say that if someone came to my table at the pizza place the other night, and took one of the wings off a tray—not even my plate, off of a tray on my table—I probably would have laughed and high-fived the guy. The amount of idiotic gumption it takes to do such a thing is incredible, and I respect that.
I realize that not everyone has the same sense of humor. What’s funny to one person, isn’t going to be funny to another. But despite the woman’s reaction, I still think it was funny. I’m sorry that I upset her, but I don’t think I ruined anything, other than any respect she might have had for me.
But more importantly, I answered the question, “What would happen if…?”
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