Rare baby bear c. June 2008

I'm joining friends for lunch at a restaurant. I arrive late and ask for a menu. I'm informed by my friends that asking for a menu was a faux pas. This is the kind of the restaurant where you eat what the waiter recommends.

We're passing platters of undercooked turkey legs around. No one is taking any. Then the main course is served. It is seared baby bear. As someone at the table starts to slice into the bear, it moans and starts to move. I can see its charred pink flesh under patches of black fur. I scream, "It's still alive! It's still alive! Help it! Break its neck!" Another faux pas on my part, but I don't care.

I make an attempt to break its neck but I can't get a good grasp on it. I see a large knife and think I should sever its spinal cord, but I get too squeamish. S****** takes the knife from me and puts the baby bear out of its misery.

We've all lost our appetites but everyone is still intent on impressing the waitstaff. All the other food gets picked through and then beers are served at the end of the meal. Under each bottle cap is a fortune. Mine says, "It is a good thing that someone else could be strong with the knife today."

I am still shaken from the experience and find it very eerie that the fortune was so spot on. Then I look at the next table where the diners are going through the very same experience with their baby bear. I start to realize that the restaurant serves all of their baby bears on the brink of death, expecting that one person at each table will put the bear out of its misery with the conveniently placed knife. I look at my beer label and notice that it is a house brew, and that my label differs slightly from the other bottles at the table.

I shudder as I realize that my fortune was deliberately served to me as part of my role in a sinister performance orchestrated for the restaurant staff's amusement.

Hoards of people have been booking tables at this restaurant in order to be served a sophisticated and exotic meal, everyone so intent on not committing any faux pas in front of the renowned chef and waitstaff that they unwittingly, and often unknowingly, become players in an elaborate dinner theatre where the patrons are the actors and the staff enjoys the show.