*The Chinese Food Debacle*

When my family gets together there is usually a lot of loud, love, hugs, laughter, tears, and debacles.

Debacle(n)-1.) Complete failure 2.) Event that turns out to be a complete disaster often with humiliating consequences. 3.) A bad situation or mess up.

—Synonyms
2. disaster, ruin, fiasco, catastrophe, calamity.


Yesterday my family got together and as usual the night was full of all the loud noises, laughing, and love you could ever need in your life. Surprisingly, the night was pretty debacle free until about 8pm when everybody got hungry for some Chinese. Nana said they could order Chinese food as long as they only ordered what they could eat. She didn't want a fridge full of take-out like she's had in the past. 411 seemed to be the answer to all the family's problems and so they dialed it up with haste….

Information answered and gave them the magic number and an enormous order took place. "Fried rice…we'll take 50 of those please! Egg rolls...enough to feed an army, miss. Chicken…every kind you have would be pleasing." When the call was over, my cousin went to Fulin's to pick it up, but when she arrived something was amiss. The faint smell of a debacle was in the air, but nobody realized it just yet. The lady at the counter said it hadn't been called in and had no idea what order she was talking about. The obvious thing to do was to re-order the enormous list of food again and wait for it to cook. They must have forgotten to write it down, right?

Once the food was ready, my cousin took it home to all the hungry family members. While they were chowing down the phone kept ringing and ringing, but no one picked it up. Finally someone answered and a Chinese sounding woman said with frustration: "Nobody answer phone!!! This is Hunan's! Your order ready!"

Hunan's?!?! Who ordered Hunan's?! Apparently information messed up and gave them the number to Hunan's instead of Fulin's. My family tried to explain what happened, but they had cooked so much food and were very upset that we weren't going to pick it up. Apparently the excuse "My family is too loud, I couldn't hear when you said 'Hello, this is Hunan's" was not good enough. My poppy said they should just go pay for it because it was the right thing to do. So out they went again bringing two huge cardboard boxes of food home with them.

My nana now has two fridge fulls of Chinese take-out and so do all my aunts and uncles. Today my aunt said we should go try and find a family who is praying for take-out and burst through their door. We never got around to that, though.

*I told the story using the word "they", because I wasn't actually there. I left about thirty minutes before thinking that they were not going to order take-out. I heard rumors of it, but was very upset to hear that they decided against it. We made a pan of cheese toast around 6:00pm or so, but it was rationed out pretty tightly. I was starving by the time I got home and craving Chinese which is just really funny to me. We were together again tonight and laughed for so long over the chinese food debacle. SO worth it for the hilarious aftermath and sight of the fridge full of food.