Can We Taco ‘Bout It?

One of the benefits of sitting where I do at work on the boundary between support staff and executives and sales agents is the fact that kibitzing on their conversations can provide a great deal of amusement. Since it was Tuesday, some of my hungrier co-workers were having a conversation about Taco Tuesday. This provided me with a great deal of amusement, given that I am very fond of eating hard-shell tacos and especially during this time of year, during the Days of Unleavened Bread, they have long been a go-to dish as a way of eating some kind of starchy food. For my coworkers, the conversation was a way of subtly indicating to other agents who was in the in-crowd and who was not based on who got invitations, and as a way of repeating phrases like “I’m nacho friend!” or “Can we taco ‘bout it?” Such amusement is not particularly deep, at least on that level, but few things on such a level remain that way for long.

Hearing these phrases and the discussion of Taco Tuesday reminded me of my own fondness for Taco Tuesday [1], a fondness that is likely not very well known by my coworkers unless they happen to be avid readers of my blog, since my personal life, even the mundane details of my love of eating plain and hearty food, is not something I tend to openly discuss with others, even if I write about it somewhat frequently. When I lived in Beaverton, there was a restaurant, Azteca off of Beaverton-Hillsdale near the 217 freeway, where I went uxoriously on Tuesdays unless I was out of town, drinking iced tea and eating half a dozen (or more) hard-shell tacos and camping for a couple of hours while I finished a book or two before driving home to write. Having recently moved to Vancouver [2], it was simply unreasonable for me to drive so far out of the way in order to enjoy my habit of eating tacos, and being somewhat dissatisfied with the places I had tried that were close to home, I had let the tradition fall into abeyance, although the discussion of the event led me to wonder what sort of places offer tasty and inexpensive Taco Tuesday events in Vancouver, given my desire to find a place along the way home and not out of the way in some area that would cause me to waste even more gasoline than is already the case.

Tonight’s place to try, making sure of course that unleavened corn tortillas were available, something I scouted out in advance, was a place overlooking the Columbia River on the Vancouver side, called Who-Song & Larry’s Mexican Cantina. An investigation of online reviews determined that some people disliked the general decrepitude of the place and thought it needed some work, but that the food was generally tasty, and some people even ate there fairly religiously, as is my habit when I find a good place. Knowing that a good experience would likely lead to a repeat, unlike my experience last night eating some chicken fried rice at a Chinese place near work that led to an unhappy wake-up call from nature in the middle of the night, I determined to check out the place for myself and record my thoughts as to whether this was the sort of place where I was willing to eat regularly, or whether I would have a firm but quiet determination never to eat there again, as has been the case with other places.

So, how did the dinner go? I came in, was asked if I was attending Taco Tuesday and pointed to the bar area, and found a nice place where I could read in reasonable privacy and relax, ordered half a dozen tacos, which was about three too many, and ate plenty of chips and drank plenty of iced tea. It was, all in all, a pleasant experience, with a glorious view of the river and a homey and pleasant ambiance, and very pleasant wait staff, who were very friendly. It was very easily a place I could see myself eating at loyally, at least at present, and the food was tasty. I consider it a successful experiment and one well worth trying again to see if it is a habit that I wish to make in the future, as the place has a fine prospect and the staff did not complain at all about my camping, which is something that could ignore a more fussy sort of wait staff more obsessed with turning over chairs occupied by people who eat slowly and read for long periods of time as I do.

Besides my fondness for tacos, I pondered also what was being said in the playful and somewhat repetitive jibes of my coworkers. To be sure, I was not an intended audience of these comments; I simply happened to be within hearing range even if they were not directed at me. Nevertheless, they reminded me, if any reminder was necessary, that communication is an area where I struggle, and that social interactions are fraught with a great deal of stress and anxiety, more than ought to be the case for someone who is pleasant company and interested in many different areas of study and behavior. Even so, I am a person who tends to find many interactions with others stressful, and finding places to be that encourage a sense of relaxation and contentment where I can chat with bartenders while I drink tea and read and find humor in the goings on of what is around me is something that I appreciate, and something that should not be nearly so difficult to find for someone as sociable and yet so painfully and awkwardly shy as I am, and so consistent, even rigidly so, in many of the patterns that I have, even in such mundane matters as feeding my belly with tasty discount tacos.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/11/23/breaking-up-is-hard-to-do/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/in-praise-of-cultural-appropriation/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/11/20/i-love-you-like-a-fat-kid-loves-cupcakes/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/04/23/hold-on-cause-the-world-will-turn-if-youre-ready-or-not/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/08/05/a-modest-proposal-for-a-web-integrated-dating-show/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/03/02/are-you-wild-like-me-raised-by-wolves-and-other-beasts/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/04/16/knowledge-puffs-up-but-love-builds-up/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/05/06/when-cinco-de-mayo-and-taco-tuesday-collide/

[2] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/02/29/coming-to-your-neighborhood/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/04/03/all-over-creation/