Helen, Hannah, James and I went to the Malt Shop on Concordia courtesy of Dianne at the Post Office. Paul was our server and he was quicker than coffee turns to shit. I think I didn’t get the cheese curds because I knew that I wanted to get dessert and a meal, but the fact that they have cheese curds is very important.

I didn’t get the Megatroid because James did. James observed that “[the Megatroid] was encrusted in cheese in such a massive way that you can’t even pick it up”-and James has sinewy arm muscles and good looks. Helen got spinach lasagna, which looked like small styrofoam balls racing down yellow ocher slides in waves of chunky red water with wilted green life rafts. She thought the stretchy ocher slides were over-represented. Helen also got a pineapple malt.

Hannah got root beer, coffee and the criss-cut seasoned fries, which were quickly swallowed and very tradable. I got Karin’s Snappy Chicken Sandwich, a delicacy that carried cucumber, cream cheese, tomato and spicy breaded chicken, all on an onion roll. Jewish-Southern real late night food could one day evolve from this. I also ordered cottage fries, which are thin slices of fried potato with the skins still on. Quite tasty.

Hannah got a lot of quarters and gave them to the rest of us so we could pick songs out of the jukebox. She went first and picked “Devil Went Down to Georgia”. Then James picked “All My Rowdy Friends are Coming Over,” by Hank Williams, Jr. Helen picked “Like a Rock” by that Sieger guy whose live album she recently got, which I don’t like a lot. I picked “Freebird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd because I wanted to make the most of my quarter. Something strange happened, however, and I never got to hear “Freebird.” Yeah, some jukebox.

So I started watching Paul, the waiter, at the next booth. He was really excited about explaining to the booth that he doesn’t like the Oreo shake because it doesn’t have Oreos. It was all very complicated, but in the end Paul was the winner, and the table was happy.

I thought his name would be Sean, but no one agreed; they all thought that if it were Sean it would be Shawn, but even then they didn’t think it was Shawn. Hannah thought it was Kevin, Helen thought it was Adam, and James thought it was Jason. James also thought that Paul was a bastard of efficiency.

For dessert we split a brownie sundae that tasted like an amusement park or the feeling of never having dandruff again.

As Hannah reached for her coat, her coffee cup with root beer in it scurried ever close to the edge of the table, but something slightly bad didn’t happen. At The Malt Shop, bad things never happen.

When we left and approached my car, I felt that the other cars like the “Careful Painters” truck made my car look small. But my car isn’t small. I started singing the “Like a Rock” song that Helen picked from the jukebox in my head and we all walked in slow motion closer to my car. Straight out of the movies.

The overall Malt Shop experience gets a 7 out of 10. I would recommend it sparsely, noting that they do have cheese curds.