Let’s talk about the word “special” for a moment, shall we? I’m not talking about it in the context of “special needs,” mind you. (But now that I think about that term, it keeps sounding more and more demeaning. “Oh everybody has needs, but his needs are super duper special!”) I’m talking about the noun form of it. We’re used to seeing that noun most often in two distinct realms: television and dining.
When there’s a t.v. “special,” it’s usually fairly true to the meaning of the word. That it, it’s a not-regularly-scheduled program that should have increased value to the audience because of its rarity. It’s special compared to the normal crap that the station airs, right? So I have no problem with that usage.
Let’s say you’re out at a restaurant and the server comes over to greet you. What often happens next? He or she tells you the “specials.” For the most part, I think these fit the bill as well. The swordfish entree isn’t on their menu but they’re making it tonight, so it’s special. Fine. That said, there’s a place down the street from my old office that my buddy Rob and I went to a handful of times that always had the same “special.” It quickly became a running gag, and we’d have to try to keep a straight face as the server said the same thing verbatim as we’d heard every other time in there. In fact, if we drove past that restaurant, it was likely that one of us would say to the other, “Hey, I wonder if they’re serving their lightly dusted sanddabs with blah blah blah mustard something.” “Ooh, they just ran out,” the other might reply. Good times.
That brings us to lunch specials, specifically the kinds that have no right using that word. I’ve been to countless places that have the same “specials” on their printed menus or even on giant banners that never get taken down. If you have them every single day for people to order, that’s not a special; that’s just a menu item. I thought about this because I was eating lunch a couple of days ago at a Mexican place recommended to me by that same buddy Rob. I studied the giant glossy banner announcing the “lunch specials” and saw that they each came with rice and beans. I ordered the carne asada burrito “special” because that’s what I do to compare manzanas to manzanas, then took a seat. A few minutes later, the guy nodded to me and I walked up to take my tray of food. I looked and saw only a wrapped up burrito on the plate. “Excuse me,” I said, “but I thought the special came with rice and beans.” Without missing a beat, he replied, “They’re inside the burrito.” He said it as if it should’ve been obvious. “Oh that makes sense,” I said sarcastically, but he missed my tone completely and smiled as though he fully answered my question. Awesome.
So that’s what caused me to analyze the word in detail and write this post. (And in case you were wondering, the burrito itself was pretty good, but nothing special.)
