Sometimes, listening to all of the conversations happening around you in a restaurant pays off with a new family catchphrase. This past weekend, we added “American Classic” to our repertoire.

We went to Albuquerque for the monthly Costco extravaganza, and on the way, we decided to stop off at The Range in Bernalillo for some lunch. We always ate there when we lived in the area, so it’s kind of fun for us to go back and see if they have the same paintings on the walls or the same waitstaff. You know, old people fun times.

So we’re sitting there, looking at our menus, and we notice that there’s a guy with sunglasses and a very expensive shirt sitting at the table next to us, with a table full of people who are obviously his entourage, because they’re all hanging on to his every word and laughing at all of the things he says, even when they’re not that funny. They’re doing quite a bit of filming in this area these days, so we can only assume he is some kind of movie person or something because he is most definitely not a local.

At any rate, they get their order, and the guy goes off about his “f@$&ing BLT.” Seriously. He was mad. So he starts saying things like, “How do they mess up a f@#$ing BLT? This bread is absolutely the wrong thickness!” and other things of that nature, and gestures wildly for the waiter to come over to his table.

The waiter, who was a very nice guy, early 20s, good at his job, gets there and says, “Is there anything wrong with your order?”

Here it comes...

The movie guy goes, “How do you guys mess up a BLT? It’s an AMERICAN CLASSIC?!?”

Then he proceeds to outline that the bread is a fraction of an inch too thick, so that the insides of the bread aren’t toasted (how do you even toast the insides of a piece of bread?), and that the ratio of mayonnaise is wrong, and that the bacon isn’t “the right amount of crispy.”

Yeah. And he uses the term American Classic multiple times.

So the guy leaves, gets him a new sandwich, and all is calm.

Yikes, dude. Those movie guys sure are picky with their sandwiches.

But, after all, we did get to refer to pretty much every purchase we made in Costco as an American Classic, and also pretty much everything else we encountered that day. Even the people on the freeway driving like maniacs. American Classics.

It’s funny. Ha ha ha.