The Back of the Bus

Not content to simply spend the entire evening sitting around at home on Wednesday, I sent an e-mail to Angie Ochoa after leaving work. Initially, my plan was just to get her to have a late lunch with me. Since she still works at the Shoah Foundation, she can pretty much eat anytime she wants, so I am often able to get her to immediately abandon her faithful cataloguing of man's inhumanity to man and eat Thai food with me. Today, however, she was not able to meet me for lunch but told me that she would be able to have dinner.

So, we agreed to meet at her place at 8:00. I left my house at about 6:00 and did some other errands, eventually arriving at her house at 7:50. As usual, she was late. I occupied my time by going through her mail, balancing on the curb and throwing rocks at the tree across the street. I rang the doorbell once to see if her sister was home, but there was no answer. That's probably a good thing, because I don't really know her sister all that well, and we would be put in the terrible situation of having to make awkward small talk.

Angie eventually showed up at 8:15, returning home from shoe shopping on Melrose with another friend of ours, Mischal, who was unable to join us for dinner. After dropping Mischal off, we drove to this little Italian restaurant on Melrose called La Buca, which was a little more pricey than either of us expected. Still, the food looked good, and it seemed like a nice place, so we decided to stick around.

While we were there, a party broke out around us. Seems the Italian guy sitting next to us was celebrating a birthday. He was provided with a cake from the owner, as well as a bottle of champagne. The birthday celebrant began pouring champagne into several glasses and handing them out to different patrons around the restaurant. Angie and I were sitting there, anxiously awaiting our own glasses of champagne. Much to our dismay, however, we were the only two people in the establishment who were not given any. We were quite confused by it and couldn't figure out why. At first, we thought that it might have been because Angie is Mexican- that perhaps the Italians in the restaurant did not take kindly to her coming 'round there.

As the rest of the restaurant toasted the birthday boy, we sat there with sullen looks on our faces, silently eating our calamari. Throughout dinner we contemplated whether we ought to contact the ACLU, or have Jesse Jackson stage some sort of sit-in at the restaurant.

When we finished our meal, however, we were surprised to find that we were given a piece of the man's birthday cake, which we ate with tears of joy streaming down our faces. We were worthy of eating their cake.

It was at that point that we decided that the reason we were not given champagne was not because her skin is brown but rather, more than likely, it was her diminutive stature. See, the thing about Angie is that, if she wanted to, she could probably pass for a twelve year old. If she were to take full advantage of her appearance, she could get into all movies for a discounted price, order from the children's menu at restaurants, and get arrested for truancy if she were walking around in public during the middle of the day.

We ended up talking with the owner for quite some time after we finished eating. He moved from his home in Italy to Los Angeles about three years ago and opened up the restaurant about seven months ago. He was quite the friendly sort and, if the restaurant wasn't so expensive, it's the kind of place at which I'd like to be a regular.

Anyway, as predicted, the AP Biology students have been quite easy to deal with. The high school, like the middle school, is on block schedule, so the periods are 100 minutes long. Since the students have already taken the AP test, they don't really have much to do these days. Today, they were watching the movie Gattaca, so I got to watch that twice today.

The weather is starting to get hotter here in Southern California (although it's probably nothing compared to those of you from Arizona and/or Nevada.) But it is decidedly uncomfortable when one is still a little bit sick but can't really afford to take another day off to get better.