When Continental Divide joined Richmond Brunch Weekend’s lineup, I had yet to be there, though I only live a mile away. I quickly looked up their menu, and besides craving brunch, their dinner menu looked like da bomb. Southwest Caesar salad? Thai chicken burrito? Yes, yes, yes.

So before I even went for brunch, I stopped by for dinner with a friend. Except my friend and I pushed back our meeting time by an hour because of some crazy thunderstorm, but I was starved, so I ate half a jar of peanuts by the time dinner actually arrived. So then I’m at Continental Divide, and the waiter asks what I want to order, and secretly I’m in my first trimester from those peanuts.

I asked for something lighter, even though I really wanted that Southwest Caesar salad, but I was imagining a plate of romaine sapped in heavy dressing, and the peanuts within me curdled. But my friend did get the Caesar salad. When the waiter put it down on the table, I wanted to crawl across the table and hold him back with a butter knife while I devoured it.

Yesterday my friend told me she wanted a salad, so later I asked if she got her salad. Yeah, she went to Panera, and she got some Asian salad.

Me: “McDonald’s has the same salad for half price. It’s so good.”

(I actually don’t know if McDonald’s has the same salad, but they have darn good salads, and I’m a staunch McD’s advocate, because ice cream cones. And iced coffee. ~swoons~)

“But,” my friend says, insert blah blah bah. Probably something about Panera bread on the side. Whoopdie do dah.

Me: “Touch you.”

My friend frowns. “What did you say?”

“Huh?”

“Did you say touch me?”

Yeah, I did. “Yeah, touch you.”

“What does that mean?”

“Like, touch you.”

Long pause.

“It’s a figure of speech,” I attempt to justify while remembering that this is the third time I’ve had this conversation in recent memory. Every time I say “touch you” and there’s break enough in the conversation for my friend to question it, I end up defending the saying.

Because it is a saying. Right?

Apparently not because no one else knows it. But I use it all the time, and I have no idea where it came from. I hate to think I made it up.

“It’s, like, referencing King Midas,” I elaborate to my friend. “Like, touch you, I might turn to gold. You know the guy, whatever he touched, it turned to gold?”

“Yeah, I know the story.”

“It’s like ‘Do you want a cookie?’ You just say, ‘Touch me.’”

My friend shakes her head. Amused, but not amused.

Me: “Is that not a saying?” I then ponder, “It sounds sorta sexual, doesn’t it? That’s awkward. I don’t mean it in a sexual way. Is it really not a saying?”

“No…it isn’t.”

So have I made up a new catchphrase?

Editor's Note: I vote no, that is not a real saying.

Brunch Review: Continental Divide

Touch Me

© 2015 As Told Over Brunch.