Stimulus and Steak n Shake

My dad drove up to Upland to deliver the wonderful book, The Elements of Style, and such occasions are usually met with him taking me out to dinner. We were talking of sociology.

We play at talking of lofty things, my dad and I, neither of us usually an expert on what we say. But our opinions reside somewhere between common sense and abstract thought, and so to each other we exchange and repeat phrases, exercising our rights as Americans to be completely right or wrong about what we say.

The stimulus package came up in conversation, mostly because I have/had no idea what it was all about. I just heard it flying around the past week, buzzing on the TV as every newscaster smiled when they got the chance to say "stimulus package" and knew that the audience was suddenly back with them. However, the name does nothing to describe what was in the package, only that it promised stimulus. And so I asked my dad.

I was left with the notion that if it doesn't work, my generation (whether that is x, y, or z, I'm not sure anymore) is going to be left with the bill. I'm someone who gets weak in the knees thinking about three weeks from now. How am I supposed to stand up to the thought of paying more taxes on a modest teacher's salary at a nondisclosed time in the future?

We were eating Fazoli's as we talked. I was staring down my baked spaghetti as he dumped dressing on his side salad. To get there, we had to drive past a Steak n Shake, which always gets my stomach in a slight knot. It is as if I can hear the highschool and college uproar at the slow decline of the hotspot losing its shine.

Four meals under four dollars, eh? And yet I have to pay for cheese and a buck and a half Coke. Thanks, Steak n Shake.

Steak n Shake was once a giant, and now it seems it's slowly shrinking under the girth of its own prices. Poor management and rising food prices haven't helped it. Could this become the US? Could the economy dwindle into nothing as people have less and less to spend?

I can live without Steak n Shake, reguardless of how I feel about their apple walnut salads. And I can continue living without thinking about the future economy. Why worry about things I can't control? I can do as much now about the US economy as I can trying to save Steak n Shake. Lord willing, they'll both survive.