He didn't understand the words that were coming out of my mouth.

Tonight Ross and I had dinner at the Olive Garden, which was lovely. Many of you know that we are on our supertight budget, but thanks to a gift card from los padres de Remus, we got to treat ourselves to some fine, I-talian cuisine. After gorging ourselves on breadsticks, salad, and other fabulous carbohydrates (and having our first real conversation in many months-meaning we didn't talk about Star Trek or bikes), we passed our card along to the waitress. The card covered all of our meal, but only about half of our tip. The meal itself cost $22.52. That left us with a $2.48 balance on the card. You're with me, right? Being the sister of a server, I couldn't leave that measly little tip-we wanted to go with closer to $5.00. Still with me? So, I proceed to fill in the charge slip and tip the waitress the remaining $2.48, planning on leaving an additional $2.00 in cash for the lovely young lady who kept feeding our fat faces all night. I hope you're still with me, because that was where Ross's mind was completely blown. He looked at what I was doing, shook his head and said "No..." (and those of you who know Ross know exactly what that "no" sounded like), grabbed the slip, scratched out what I wrote, and filled in $4.48 on the tip line of the charge slip. The charge slip that showed we only had $2.48 left on the card. Meaning we would have, in fact, owed the server $2.00. $2.00 that I was planning on leaving on the table. $2.00 that Ross insisted we didn't have to leave on the table because we had written on the slip that we were giving it to our server.

After much yelling/whispering at ultrasonic levels and gesticulating to get my point across, my blood boiling with each smug wag of Ross's head, the muscles in his face relaxed, his eyes opened wide as if he had just been revealed the secret to eternal youth, and he said "Ohhhhhhhhh." Flabbergasted, I snatched back the slip, filled in the *correct* amount, tossed the cash on the table, and stalked out of the restaurant. Don't worry. I took Ross with me.

Moral of the story: If you ever get a check from Ross made out for $1,868,769,980,342.78 I wouldn't cash it because he probably doesn't have it, but seems to think it's ok. I like to think that he's really just saying, "If I *had* this, I'd give it to you, man."


Note: I love Ross more than anything. Not in spite of this episode, but because of it.