Back about '97 our foreign exchange student's parents came to pick her up for the return back to Switzerland. Her Dad's name is Dominique... and without question he is one of a kind, unlike anyone else I've ever known. In a good way, certainly an entertaining way, albeit a very embarrassing way.

I'm not going to try to explain him... he defies description. I'll just say he lives by his own rules.

So to Cayucos. That was one of our stops while showing them around California. Can't remember the restaurant name but it was one of the more upscale ones. We were reading the menu and Dominique was asking me what he should get. That's when we learned that Dominique had a very friendly, but rather unusual, decision making process.

He got up from the table and began visiting tables, people, around us, to ask them about what they were having. We were surprised, of course, but not really shocked... until:

He began asking them if he could taste their food. His daughter, our exchange student, was humiliated. <smile> She explained to us that in the town he was raised in, Portugal, before moving to Switzerland, this was a 'common' practice.

Now yes, I was shocked... but the more I thought about it... I dunno, maybe that's how people should be?