Casual Nights

I definitely wanted to blog this last night; however, time escaped me too quickly. My mother and I went out last night in a hurry to get some serious shopping done. Afterwards, we went out to eat, and at nine o'clock, we were about the only people in the restaurant. Our waiter seemed like he was on his sixteenth hour and slap happy. He was kind of cute, and I thought he was flirting with me just a little bit, but I dismissed it to his high of working on his only day off. Later on, when my mother paid the bill, he came back and sat next to her. He asked to see her ID, which always makes her happy. Then she got the familiar, "Any relation to Janet Reno?" question, and shot back the even more familiar, "No, but I do have a sister named Janet." The whole time, I just kind of hung my head in slight embarrassment. He then looked at me and said, "What's your name?" I stammered, "Je--Jeni" with slight fear. He asked my mother if I was her daughter, and she got all gooey and said, "Yeeees." They then both looked over at me, and he said, "Mom, she's kind of cute." My mother beamed, and I shot out, "Okay, no I'm not!--" "And modest," he said. He mentioned that he had just moved to Memphis about 3 months ago, and that he didn't know much about the city. I told him I'd lived here more than twenty years, and I still didn't know jack about the city. My mother interrupted, "But if want to get around in Atlanta, she can help you." Ironically, he graduated from University of Georgia. There was also a point in our conversation where he mentioned he carried a pillow in his car, which brought me great excitement. (So, I immediately started planning our wedding. ::severe sarcasm::) He told me that I was cute a few more times, which kind of helped me believe it. My mother was trying desperately to write my phone number on the receipt, so I literally had to drag her out of the restaurant. All she could say was, "You need to go out with him," which is also ironic because she noticed that he smoked (or at least smelled of it), and both my parents abhor smoke. In fact, they have embarrassed the CRAP out of me complaining about it in restaurants. All this to say, he was really cute & funny, and I would have totally gone out with him...I just don't know how to conduct myself anymore. I almost feel like I should come with a caution tee shirt listing all my shortcomings, which, now that I think about it, would probably have to be the length of a dress. I did admire him for having the chutzpah to tell me that I was cute, especially with my mother on the other side of the table. I should learn from him.