"You Better Not Ask for Seltzer!"

As I returned to LA city proper after a sojourn in Costa Mesa today to give a lecture to incoming law students, it was well after 4 p.m. and I decided it made no sense to go to the office. I hadn't had lunch, and I was hungry and figured I'd hit The Farmer's Market on Third. It was a nice respite. It always is. Me. My food. My entertainment magazine (there really IS nothing much coming out I want to see this Fall).

On the way out of one of the gates walking back to my car I passed the usual tourists wending their way to the gastronomical stalls, and a short, balding man with an unmistakable borough of New York accent (sounded more Bronx than Brooklyn) was exhorting his wife, presumably about the beverage she could choose to accompany her feast---and he seemed very insistent--"You Better Not Ask for Seltzer!" I could have followed to hear the full context for the husbandly remonstration, but I didn't. I was going one way. They, the other. But as I continued on, I wondered why she was prohibited to ask for seltzer. I thought about the things that families make important, almost make moral imperatives, that really are not. I could imagine him saying, "You always ask for seltzer, Mona, (don't know if that is her name, but it fits the image of the two of them), don't you get tired of seltzer; I get tired of your asking for seltzer. Get a coke." Or maybe he really had a moral adjacent reason, maybe seltzer makes her unwell. I say unwell, but I mean that maybe it makes her, you know, burp, uncomfortably. For her. For everyone else. Maybe he worries that it will unsettle her stomach and ill affect their week vacation. I know what his words reminded me of, things that a parent said to a kid when I was young. "You betta not go into the water, you just ate" which meant that if you go into the water to swim after you eat, you'll drown. Not true, but I believed it till I was 40. Ok. I'm kidding. Or, "you betta go the the bathroom before we leave".

I don't know. Something about that flash of an exchange made me smile. There was an innocence about it. I bet she asked for Seltzer.