Dover DE and disappearing into a sad time warp.

I had to get my car serviced today, and since there are no dealers in the Rehoboth area that service foreign cars, I had to drive to Dover for an 8 a.m. appointment, which meant getting up early for something completely boring.

I thought I'd walk to find some breakfast, rather than sit with the senior citizens in the totally void of natural light, dimly painted and broadcasting Fox News lounge area. So I was pointed in the direction of Nino's, who serve breakfast, lunch and dinner. On Route 13. Sounds great...right next to the tire place.

Here's some ponderings on Nino's Diner.

Diners can be cool, or they can be morbidly depressing. Paper placemats with local advertising all over them, really really bad artwork, and shiny seats that stick to your bare skin. Two old people having breakfast together, and they never spoke a word. But they perked right up when their food came, and the wife thought her husband's omelette looked bigger, so she wanted to switch. Another guy came in, who was Mr. Something or another...everyone knew his name. Dover's Norm. He was extremely bugged because they were out of  "patties"...which I'm assuming means sausage patties? Oh, and the music...MUZAC....god help me. It was enough to make anyone jump out the window, and it was a one-level building. I swore to myself I'd remember the name of one of the songs...which was bad enough in it's normal state, but when turned in muzac, became a whole new kind of hell. The waitress made me the most sad of all. They had her in a pink uniform, like the kind from "Alice" and all I could think of was how much money could she possibly make, working at Nino's for breakfast? I watched her sweep the pile of coins left on the glass-top table from the previous customer. Coins. They went into her apron. I kept picturing her counting them out later at her own kitchen table and it made me really, really sad. Yuck. Did she want to be a waitress or did her life just turn that way? What did she want to be? She was probably 45-50 years old. Kids? Husband? Where did she live? Could she pay her bills? Does everyone go through this kind of questioning in this kind of situation or am I just a freak?