single girl pancakes

This is one of the reasons why being an adult -- and, just as importantly, a single adult -- is sometimes kind of glorious.

It's six o'clock on a Friday night. An hour ago, as I was pulling out of the parking garage at work, I was struck by a sudden, illogical and completely desperate craving for pancakes.

At the age of 25-going-on-26, I’m still childishly surprised by this:  the fact that I am in a position to satisfy my own whims, that the difference between wanting pancakes and getting pancakes is nobody’s purview but my own.

So I’m here, at IHOP. I am placidly drinking a bottomless cup of coffee, working on a book that was rattling around in the back seat of my car. The waiter, an industrious, chubby fellow, keeps stopping by my table solicitously to inquire how things are going. He’s eager to adjust the whole restaurant’s air conditioning to my preference. And I keep waving him away with my fork, in between bites of my huge fluffy stack of harvest grain pancakes.

But here’s the best part:  Nobody wants to know where I am. There is no place I am supposed to be, no one who needs me right now. I suppose these should be lonely realizations, but they aren’t. This is heaven in a blue plastic booth and maybe, I think, I will start coming here every Friday.