Short Story Essay: The Crepe Shop

Reggie Princeton loved crepes. More than any burly, forty-something year-old man with a balding head and a beard that put the guys of Duck Dynasty to shame probably should. He loved crepes so much he’d created and cooked for a restaurant solely based around crepes for upwards of forty-something years. And now that his kids were old enough, they worked there in the summers too.
And it’s not that Reggie didn’t love his kids, he did. He even liked the teenager who’d just showed up at the counter one day and started working there, Leonard Kim. But they were all terrible at their jobs.
During the school year it was manageable, because his girls were busy with school and two elderly ladies named Gladys and Agatha stepped into help. Leonard worked
Some fourteen year old. The context? Her twin, Maxine (distinguishable by her reddish pixie cut and the fact that she was a good half a foot shorter than her sister) was trying to light Leonard’s hair on fire with a candlestick while he cleaned the countertop. Meanwhile, their younger sister Nataly was begging for s'mores while kicking the wooden bar counter with her light up shoes.
Everyday was a lesson in fire safety down at The Crepe Shop.
Reggie frowned the disappointed frown that had pretty much become his regular facial expression, clapped his big, meaty hands together and said, “Alright!” To give him some credit, Maxine did put the candle out.
Nataly, on the other hand, continued her whining and Leonard joined in when he found out there was a missed opportunity for food. Shelby got them to stop by slamming the giant black binder she carried with her everywhere in the summer---containing all the reservations, expenses, ingredient stock, and “Crepe of the Day” plans going up until 2019---on the faux granite countertop a few
He ran back to the stove so fast Reggie almost flipped a crepe into her face. “Dad! We ran out of gooseberry preserves!” she practically shouted. Reggie tried to calm his daughter down though, after fourteen and a half years he still hadn’t found a foolproof way to do so. He tried going the assuring route, “It’s fine.” Shelby started to breathe heavily. “It’s fine. We only need the gooseberry preserves for ‘The Crepetastrophe.’” “But---” “It’s ok, no one in this town has the gut to order it.” And that was true. ‘The Crepetastrophe’ was a stack of thirty crepes, ten plops of varying flavors of ice cream, and every topping the restaurant could get it’s hands on---in particular the gooseberry preserves. But in the restaurant that day happened to be one out of towner both intent on getting a hearty meal. And though, every other part of him was utterly un-astounding, Lorentz Schnitzel boasted a great stomach It probably wasn’t coincidental. Being engaged to the owner of a chain of fro-yo shops in Texas, Lorentz had to know that chaos ensued when an ingredient wasn’t readily available.