My mother is the cheapest person in the world.  After 8 years of saying, "I need new living room tables, these things are so old and ugly," she finally bought an end table last week.  The table she bought was on clearance.  It was on clearance because it had all but been run over with a semi and then dragged through a red paint factory by a string tied around a calf's tail.  The look on my mothers face when she gets a good deal is parallel to the look she had when I graduated high school, or had my first art show.  She lights up.  I've always found this quality in her annoying as hell, an ugly quality that unknowingly has rubbed off on me.
     I was on a date with a handsome man I met in my creative writing class named Topher.  Topher was chubby in all the right places and thin in the important ones.  His face was beautiful and I found myself lost in his 27 year old smokers laugh lines.  Topher took me to an upscale steak house that charged eighteen bucks for two peices of iceberg lettuce smothered in blue cheese.  I gasped so loud when I saw the price of a cocktail that the waiter rushed over to make sure there wasn't a pubic hair in my water, (which was two dollars because it was purified.)  Normally I would have walked out upon seeing these prices and gone to Mc.Donalds instead, but since Topher was paying I ordered a 16 ounce steak, cheesy bacon gourmet potato wedges, a coke not water, and two pieces of iceberg lettuce.  Our bill with tip was well over a hundred dollars, but that's one thing I've learned from my mom, if someone is going to pay; pretend that you are going to pay and then let them pay immediately after you reach for your wallet. 
      It wasn't until the food got to our table that I realized I was so full on free coke refills that the thought of cramming anything else in my mouth would result in vomit.  That I learned from my father, the cheapest man in the world.  When my father would take my brother and I out to dinner, he would ask the waitress for about a thousand refills before we begged him to stop.  Half way through the demolition of my 30 dollar steak, I began to sweat like a pig, occasionally letting my head fall backward in pure food fatigue.  Dinner conversation had been reduced to me grunting through a mouthful of steak and potatoes and my skin tight shirt was hugging my growing gut in a repulsive way.  I was truly the image of a bad date.
      "Ryan, you don't look like your having a good time, lets get a to go box and we could go watch a movie at my place."  Truth be told, I was misserable, I was so full it hurt.  But instead of taking Topher up on his offer, which probably would have lead to me getting laid, I opted to finish my meal.  Letting a perfectly hot meal go to waist is a travesty akin to that of a global holocaust in my mind.  Later that night, when eighty dollars worth of food was launching itself from my throat, I was forced to ask myself why at the age of 22, so I frequently eat so much I get sick?  The answer was simple: food costs money, and if you waist food you might as well take money out of your pocket and throw it in the trash.