I was at breakfast with my father one weekday morning at a deli that he regularly went to. When we walked in and sat down, they handed me a menu and then walked away without giving one to my father.
I asked him if he wanted to see mine, and he said, “Oh, they started making my breakfast as soon as I walked in.”
Although they say variety is the spice of life, my father recognized that as a creature of habit, there’s an efficiency to life when you do the same routines over and over again. While that’s one takeaway from that experience, another one was that he was a regular at several different places and that the relationships he built over time created another kind of familiarity that felt very good to him. He seemed to have friends everywhere.
If you are ever near the City Line Deli in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, stop in and have yourself that Herb W style breakfast. I hear it’s really good.