When I was in junior high, dad was working the swing shift, so we didn’t get to see each other much (he’d leave for work before I got home from school). One day, he arranged to pick me up for lunch from school. We headed into downtown San Jose, into perhaps not the best part of town. We ate at a little Mexican restaurant that served the type of spicy food we both liked, but no one else in the family did. Bit of a hole-in-the wall place, and the kitchen might not have passed mom’s Home Economics-teacher level of inspection. Of course the food was great.
As he dropped me off back at school, he said, “Tell Mom we ate at Denny’s.”