Matthew Of The IHOP Restroom Part 1

Back between Christmas of 2007 and starting back to classes in the Spring of 2008, I started to write this story called Matthew of the IHOP Restroom. It took me until May to finish this 10 part story. I posted it on Facebook and MySpace. But I pulled it from Facebook and I rarely use MySpace anymore. So I have decided to start posting the 10 parts here on blogspot...and when I finish that, the parts of the sequel: Dan of the Grocer's Freezer Aisle (formerly "A Bank On Metcalf"). There isn't going to be much order in when I post these. I just will.

Matthew of the IHOP Restroom Part 1

Warren Zevon once said, “They say love conquers all, you can’t start it like a car, you can’t stop it with a gun.” He also said, “I went home with a waitress the way I always do. But how was I to know that she was with the Russians too?” What does this have to do with this story? Absolutely nothing; except of course for the fact that Warren Zevon was the greatest influence of our hero, Matthew Albertson. He grew up in a town in Kansas just outside the edge of the Kansas City suburbs.
Matthew, who didn’t like his name shortened to Matt because, as he would say, he wasn’t thrown out on the floor to be walked on, was currently in college, worked two jobs during the summer, one at the local Dairy Queen and the other at a Price Chopper store. When he wasn’t in school or working; he enjoyed writing songs using his guitar or hanging with his friends. He was also madly in love, well, he would say madly, with Katie Waller who he had an English class with. She of course would never know this until much later and at the time, Matthew, knowing he had nothing much to offer since he did just work at Dairy Queen and Price Chopper and wrote music, chose to leave it that way.
Matthew’s story starts out like any other story where a guy decides to hang out with his buddies and get breakfast at the local IHOP restaurant at 3am when his buddies were drunk and he was stuck driving. This is, however, the first time that I personally have ever read of a story where buddies decided to hang out at IHOP and so maybe it’s not like any other story at all. And little did Matthew know that going to this particular IHOP on this particular date of March the third would wind up changing his life forever.
But this story doesn’t have to do with what Matthew ordered to eat, or that one of his buddies, Jim, had to argue with the waitress because he wanted Pepsi and no, a Coke was not the same thing as a Pepsi nor is it about his other friend, Dan who tried hitting on the waitress, the hostess working that night and a vacuum cleaner they had out trying to clean the floors since he was, after all, the drunkest of them all. This is about what happened when Matthew decided to use the restroom after giving his order. Matthew opened the door to the restroom and suddenly found himself entering a bright light room.
“Hello?” he called out. He didn’t get an answer. He walked in, couldn’t find anything, so he went back to the door to find that it wasn’t there. “Hello?!” he called out again, this time more urgent. “Is anybody there?!” He began to move, float rather as he felt himself moving faster and faster. He was afraid he was going to hit the wall on the other side. But before he could hit any wall, the bright white light came whizzing around him in more colors. First, the light changed to pink, followed by red and the rest of the spectrum colors when Matthew realized he was no longer in an IHOP restroom but in some kind of rotating vortex or a wormhole of some kind.
This is impossible, he thought. He started to scream for help and then realized that it wasn’t getting him anywhere. He unfortunately wasn’t very good with science. If he had been, he could have simply stated that a wormhole had formed in the IHOP restroom that was large enough for him to pass through. But then again, if he were a scientist, he’d scratch that idea off and say that it was impossible because there would need to be two black holes placed in the right location and it’s kind of hard to harness one black hole.
In fact, the only things that Matthew would be able to say would be how to prepare a Peanut Buster Parfait, what’s the right kind of meat to get for a party, the lyrics to every Warren Zevon song including ones that were never released, anything involving guitar or song writing and anything from English; which Matthew probably wouldn’t even attend that class if it weren’t for a chance to see Katie Waller every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Before Matthew ever even conceived that it was really a portal to another dimension that only specially trained holy men in that dimension could open, he wound up in that dimension surrounded by many men who he could hear cheering as he entered in a matter that seemed to sort of be spitted out onto the floor.
“The chosen one has arrived on our soil!” cried one of the holy men. “Praise Sampsonite!”
Matthew shot up and said to the holy man, “wait a minute, do you mean me?”
“Yes!” exclaimed the holy man. “We have brought you here because you are the chosen one. If you weren’t, it would have been someone else who was picked. You are the chosen one. Please, say your name and where you just came from.”
This had to be a dream, Matthew thought. I thought I wasn’t the one who had anything to drink. But, deciding it would be safer to play along, he said, “I’m Matthew Albertson and I just came from the IHOP restroom.”
Suddenly, every man, woman and child stood up and bowed to him after saying in unison “ALL HAIL MATTHEW…OF THE IHOP RESTROOM!” This was too bizarre to Matthew. He tried to insist to them that it wasn’t really the IHOP restroom he was from but rather the city but before he could think to tell them that, he started thinking about the fact that they were hailing…HIM.
Matthew didn’t see himself as any kind of leader or warrior or anything like that. He didn’t have the slightest idea what they wanted him for but it was clear to him that it was for one of those purposes. Before he could listen to the crowd chanting his name and the fact that he was from the IHOP restroom any longer, he asked the holy man to take him aside and explain to him what exactly was going on in private.
“It’s none of my business what goes on in private,” said the holy man. “If I worry too much about what goes on in private, I’d be considered a snoop.”
“NO!” Matthew argued. “I mean could we please step aside in private and you tell me what’s going on without all these on lookers watching my every move.”
“Oh, okay,” he said. He pointed to his office for Matthew to go into. Then he announced to the crowd, “Matthew, of the IHOP Restroom, has just asked to speak in private with me!”
Matthew would normally be weirded out with the idea that the holy man had to announce the fact that he was going to talk with the holy man privately. But that wasn’t what got to him. What got to Matthew was the fact that not just did the holy man say it with such enthusiasm, like a child at Christmas who just got a personal visit from someone in a Santa suit, but that the audience cheered and some even reacted like they were jealous.