Let's All Get Along

I'd been living in Italy for several years when I came back to the U.S. for a visit and discovered that everyone was being polite to each other. It's when people started saying "have a nice day" to everyone else whether they meant it or not. It's also when the salad bar came into existence, the grownups' equivalent of an ice cream shop for kids. Who can resist putting a small amount of lettuce on the plate, just enough to qualify it as a salad, in order to leave room for the chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, green pepper, Bermuda onion, unidentifiable crunchy white stuff, cheddar cheese, nuts, seeds, raisins, chopped egg, julienned ham, and scallions, all topped off with gobs of blue cheese dressing? The first time I encountered one I wanted to scream across the room at my serving person Melissa, who had told me to "yell" if I wanted anything, "fix me a plate of salad, would ya."