Last Saturday, with our kitchen out of commission for a second week due to a major home renovation, we decided that our kids had probably had enough of cereal out of foam bowls and might appreciate a real breakfast out.

We roused them from their beds and drove off to a big chain restaurant, the kind with a breakfast bar where you can eat an entire week's worth of eggs, waffles and hash browns for $7.95.

We all ordered big hot breakfasts, something we hadn't seen in a while. When I got my apple juice, I took a sip, then noticed something funny. The inside of the glass was coated with pulp. I stared for a moment, then froze. Apple juice doesn't have pulp. I looked closer. This was ... orange pulp, and it was sort of matted all over the inside of the glass, meaning it had been there for a while. I was drinking out of a dirty glass.

I started to choke. There are a lot of things in life I can handle. (Actually that's a lie. As my wife has pointed out, there are actually very, very few things in life I can handle.) One thing that creeps me out more than anything, though, is the idea of drinking out of a dirty glass, one that has touched some stranger's mouth and hasn't been washed. It's the reason whenever I check into a nice hotel and they have real drinking glasses, I wash them again myself, then hold them up to the light before I use them. If I stay in a cheap motel, the kind with plastic cups in a plastic bag, I make sure the plastic bag is hermetically sealed before I'll use it.

As I sat there gagging, the kids and my wife all started to laugh, something I really should have a word with them about. I instantly started motioning for our waitress. My kids tried to stop me. They felt, pretty strongly, that if I complained before they got their meals, the waitress would spit in all our dishes before bringing out the food. I tried to tell them they were crazy, but since I was the one who had taught them this rule of restaurant etiquette, it was hard to argue.

My wife's only concern, of course, was that I try to do it without being "too much of a jerk." (I put that in quotes because it seems to me to be a particularly insensitive thing to say, especially as I was still in shock from ingesting someone else's leftover pulp. I'm pretty sure you'll agree.)

Finally, after our breakfasts had been placed securely in front of us without any spittle additives, I called over the waitress, who didn't really seem all that interested in me or my problems. I explained to her that my glass was filthy.

She took it and held it up to the light. It wasn't a dirty glass, she said. Maybe she'd accidentally spilled some orange juice into my apple juice when she'd brought it out. If I wanted, she could get me a new one.

At this, I almost popped a blood vessel. It was a dirty glass, I insisted, with what I considered to be a measured tone. The pulp wasn't just floating in my apple juice; it was stuck to the side, the way orange pulp will do when some disease-ridden stranger has finished drinking out of it. My wife gave me a look that said that this was what she meant when she used, quite insensitively in my opinion, the term "jerk." The waitress shrugged and walked away with the glass.

I smiled at the children, confident that I'd taught them a valuable lesson: Don't accept shoddy service, and demand things be made right, just as soon, of course, as your food is safely on the table. That's what happens, I said, when you stand up for yourself.

A couple minutes later, the waitress came out with a fresh glass, smiled at me and apologized for any problems, and set my fresh apple juice in front of me. I smugly smiled back, thanked her, and took a big gulp of my well-deserved fresh juice.

That's when I noticed that my apple juice, while in a clean glass, was swimming with orange pulp. She'd just poured the old juice into a new glass.

As I sat there gagging away, my wife turned to the kids.

"And that's what happens," she said, "When you act like a jerk!"