Was It Me?

There I was at a sushi restaurant, eating dinner with my mother. We ate and talked, and this did not go on for very long before I noticed that a couple, seated behind my mother, got up and moved to another table. I spent plenty of time thinking about that. I wondered why they moved. There are some legitimate reasons why they might. Most of them have nothing to do with me, but you can imagine that I have little interest in those. Surely it must involve me.

The thing is that I know I am not the easiest person to be around a lot of the time. I'm pretty loud, and what I have to say is not appealing sometimes. Your typical suburban couple out for an adventurous dinner could easily get fed up with my musings within minutes and take the step of getting another table in a restaurant full of empty ones. My mother did not feel that I was being so loud or objectionable, but I'm not so sure about that as her.

Of course, the couple may have sought a table with a better view of one television or another. Where they were though, they could see the ones behind me well enough, and I don't know that there were options among the assortment of channels on display that were not represented among those. I could be wrong there, I don't deny it. I don't see the television explanation as being very likely. I think that whether it was my voice or not, it was not the television.

If it wasn't that, what was it? It's not like there are any awesome or terrible tables at a strip mall sushi restaurant under ordinary circumstances. If there was any reason that makes sense apart from escaping me, it would be that there was something wrong with their table, not what it was near. Perhaps they spilled something, or they really did want to be by the television that was closer to the table they moved to. Maybe it wasn't me.