Sit down. Shut up. Eat. Be happy!

I take pride in my ability to take a joke.

You know… the kind of jokes your friends use to give you a hard time, the jokes your family uses to reminisce all your most embarrassing moments growing up. 

Nearly anybody I know is a candidate for my humiliation-if intended for laughter and enjoyment, not drama and disrespect. 

That is why Chicago’s own Ed Debevic’s restaurant can’t seem to fit me more perfectly.

Home to food, humor, and dancing, this 1950s-style diner empowers the value of being “sassy.”  Suspended signs such as those reading, “We are not responsible for children trampled in aisles” embody close to every inch of their walls, concretizing their fantasy of becoming the city’s sanctuary of amusement.  They don’t believe in ‘thank you’ or ‘you’re welcome,’ for their purpose serves as being a place that mocks normative standards of approaching business. 

Servers dress in flashy costumes as they dance on counters, though it is not merely dancing, but rather an imposing performance that resembles deftness and invested practice.  If it was anything like my experience, waiters deliberately drop their trays abruptly to execute choreographed numbers.  

Sit down.  Shut up.  Eat.  Be happy!

Just reiterating my orders entering Ed’s this weekend.

Typically, confronting such a demanding host would wreak havoc on impressions and experiences of the restaurant, though Chicagoans might say differently.

To be blunt, we’re no city of wimps-and that is why I love Chicago.   We find ease with laughing at ourselves and find pleasure in challenging the norm.  Alternative restaurants such as The Weiner’s Circle and Dick’s Last Resort complement these mottos of Chicago in that they, too, stand as humorous diners that attempt to pick on customers and constitute utter impoliteness. 

However, I’m most fervidly fascinated with Ed Debevic’s in particular because of its attribution to every age.  I visited this diner at ages 10 and 13, and each year following, I’d affirm this was one of Chicago’s superlative hotspots as well as my inclination to visit again. 

I did.  And at the age of 20, I’m pleased to reassure that whether 5 or 55, there will remain keen enjoyment of the various means of entertainment enacted via Ed Debevic’s staff. 

And the reason I find this as such an exceptional trait is a result of my analogical comparison among the three mentioned diners.  Several common complaints regarding these opposing spots expose the restaurants’ lack of children-friendly atmospheres, alleging that the implemented jokes are too harsh, too advanced for the ears of children.  Ed Debevic’s, on the other hand, frequently obtains positive acknowledgements, crediting Ed’s as being a diner "crawling with kids."

I consider this aptitude as a matter of Ed’s joke selection.  There’s something to be said for humor that relates to all people-all sizes, all races, all ages.  When a joke can be found universally comical, I perceive that as a true joke; because after all, jokes are meant to provoke laughter, and there holds no incontrovertible success of a joke if it hasn’t been told to all styles of people and incited such laughs.  Nevertheless, this is not to say that each server’s every joke relays a message applicable for all or any sort of audience-it’d be unreasonable to entitle such a fact as holding absolute truth.  However, Ed’s servers may not be faultless, but they adjust in discovering further avenues of getting around the obstacle by ascertaining alternatives. 

They, instead, almost become writers.  I compare their careers with my own in that I perceive an outward association between their onuses as an Ed’s server and mine as a blogger.  One of the utmost rules of writing is deciphering an audience, becoming intuitively cognizant of gender, age, race, education, demographics-the list goes on.  These servers do just that.  They scrutinize your appearance, surrounding crowd, clothing; they pick up on accents, jargon, and behaviors.  And after their meticulous analysis, they go from there, being certain to both prompt pertinent jokes with positive conclusive outcomes as well as avoid jokes with poor prospective consequences.

I’ll use my personal times spent here as an example.  As a kid, I recall jokes such as those that made fun of human defecation-silly, yes, but a joke that as a child was tremendously humorous.  I remember jokes aimed at my guy friend, ridiculing his eating habits when finishing a burger, two cheese fries, and a milkshake; I evoke jokes that lightly teased the birthday girl at the time for falsely feeling as important as she did on her big day.  As an adult, I witnessed jokes that made fun of mine and my boyfriend’s relationship, claiming we were downright boring people for using our phones at dinner; I observed jokes targeting my boyfriend, deriding his drinking habits when ordering a glass of wine; I experienced jokes that pestered my overly enthused attitude when taking photos of the place for my blog.  And what’s even funnier is that parallel to my discussion concerning Ed’s universally relatable witticisms, much of these mentioned jokes were heard twice; the jokes about defecation?  Maybe not so much at the dinner table itself… but when searching for the bathroom, a waiter yelled, “Gotta’ poop?  To the right, weirdo”, illustrating Ed’s willingness to laugh like a kid again and look at life in a not so solemn manner. 

Each style of joking matter favors not only a precise age group but an even more narrowed set of dispositions, in which Ed’s jokes are set distinct for not just the general features of an audience, but the explicit characteristics of the individuals themselves and their personal lives.  As a boy, about 15 years or older, left the diner, my server shouted, “Stop being dumb!  Get your homework done today!”  I never heard such a joke, or all the others attained eavesdropping, and that is what sets each Ed’s customer’s experience apart from the rest.

Parents bring kids here because they long to infuse such comicality into their children, granting servers the right to instill the good senses of humor they model… as well as sip some of their tasty cocktails.

So go sit down, shut up, eat, and be happy... at the diner that emboldens laughter and boosts confidence by learning to laugh at your faults and accepting them as a technique in discerning the many animations of the world.  Being normal is boring; forget the norms of society, and eat at Ed's in Chicago.