I sat down at the corner café, ready to battle my notebook again, but my coffee betrayed me, turning from fresh espresso to tepid sadness faster than I could open my pen.

Last night’s dreams lingered, absurd: A spiral staircase leading nowhere, and a goldfish gently asking me for career advice.

I offered some tips— (“Swim against the current,” I said, sounding wiser than a half-asleep human has any right to be.)

Today, caffeine is failing at its only job: Coffee hits like tap water, and tap water, well, it feels more like a tranquilizer dart.

Maybe my goldfish client has it easier after all.

Wrote it down so I wouldn’t forget… but I still might.

I’ve never taken the LSAT, but I have taken a lot of breaks in diners. Waffle House, Huddle House, Joe’s Diner, Lena’s Diner, Friendly’s when they still had the booths with jukebox buttons. Once, I watched a man in Alabama write his resignation letter on a napkin while drinking five cups of coffee and eating a slice of lemon meringue pie he didn’t seem to enjoy. He looked calm. Maybe calmer than I’ll ever be.

(For context: tech entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian famously decided to abandon law school plans after walking out of the LSAT and heading straight to a Waffle House. Reddit was born soon after. I’m just saying.)

There’s something about diners. They’re less judgmental than cafés, less chaotic than Sheetz, and more permanent than fast food. They sit still while the world spins around them—open late, open early, and open to everyone. And if you sit long enough, maybe over hash browns and an existential crisis, you start to realize that diner menus aren’t just food lists.

They’re records.

Notebooks of regional identity, economic history, culinary defiance. Why does this place serve grits with everything? Because it’s the South. Why is there still liver and onions on the menu? Because someone out there still wants it. Why are the prices in Comic Sans? Because nobody told them not to. And why do so many menus feel like a mash-up of grandma’s handwriting, local tradition, and a mid-’90s Photoshop experiment? Because that’s exactly what they are.

In a world that often erases itself and rebrands every two years, diner menus are holdouts of American self-definition. They’re imperfect, sincere, and strangely trustworthy.

And maybe that’s why tech founders have epiphanies at Waffle House. Not just because of the hash brown bar (although, bless it), but because diners make space for ideas. For overheard conversations. For being alone in public. They’re like coffeehouses, minus the pretense, plus biscuits.

And here’s something else: diners don’t try to manipulate you. You can sit there for hours with a black coffee and a side of scrambled eggs, and no one’s pushing neon ads for triple-bacon stacks or discount cigarettes in your face. You’re a guest, not a target. That matters.

Philosophy majors should hang out in them more often.

Until next time, keep braking for historical markers—and laminated menus.