Prehistoric Creature’s Day
This post is a direct lift from the Straight dope messageboard and you can find the original here. I liked it too much not to share, so here it is.
Has anybody ever heard of Prehistoric Creature Day? It's on Friday the 13th. Every Friday the 13th is Prehistoric Creature's Day.
I used to work as a server at an upscale-casual suburban steakhouse. One Friday the 13th, probably a half-hour before I was due to be cut, my manager comes up and tells me to take table thirteen. "Have fun with it," he tells me.
So I go over to greet table thirteen - it's a man and a woman, maybe in their mid-forties.
And twelve stuffed dinosaurs.
Friday the 13th, I was told, is Prehistoric Creature's Day. If you have any prehistoric creatures in your house, you have to take them out to a nice dinner on Friday the 13th, or else they will become angry and rampage through your house, creating a huge mess. So this couple, not wanting to spend the next day cleaning up after a squadron of angry reptilians, had brought their brood of dinosaurs out to dinner.
Most of them were kind of small (the kind of stuffed animal you could put on your desk at work), but there was one rather large triceratops, to whom I offered a booster seat. The rest of the dinosaurs sat on the table.
A dinosaur ordered a bottle of (expensive) wine.
A dinosaur tasted the wine, and declared it good.
The man and woman ordered their respective entrees, with plenty of side dishes to feed the rest of the crew.
Somebody else dropped off the food, and when I came by a few minutes later to make sure everything was ok, the table had been rearranged to accomodate all of the dinosaurs and their different culinary preferences. The carnivores were positioned around the steak. The herbivores gathered near the broccoli. The fish-eaters were crowding the fried lobster tail.
Everybody was a fan of the bread, and I brought over a refill.
While they were eating, I went over to my manager. "Manager," says I. "These are by far the coolest, weirdest people we have ever had in here ever. We have to buy them a free dessert."
Manager agrees, and so after the plates have been cleared, I go back to the table with the dessert menu, and tell them that, in honor of their special day, we would like to offer them a complimentary dessert.
One dinosaur -I think he was a brontosaurus- was very excited by this. Aided by the man, the dinosaur runs very excitedly to the end of the table, eager to look over our desserts! He loves dessert! He loves - oh no! All of a sudden, the chipper brontosaurus wilts in the man's hands, and drags back to his place on the table. The man explains "He's sad because he doesn't read English. But dont worry, we'll read it to him."
They ordered dessert, everyone enjoyed it.
I forget if the man or the woman paid the bill - I just know it wasnt a dinosaur, which makes sense, as it was their day. They were being treated.
And that was by far the best table I ever had in my year and a half of waiting tables.
love
yams!!
This is dedicated particularly to the friend who first introduced me to T-Rex day, they know who they are 
.
I kind of wish we had stuffed dinosaurs to take to dinner now.
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That's great!!