Daily Inspiration Quote by William E. Geist

Terror, here, isn’t a monster in the alley; it’s typography behind glass. William E. Geist’s line works because it treats something supposedly mundane - a menu - like a public health warning. The joke lands on disproportion: “grown men,” the demographic we culturally script as unflappable, reduced to flight by dinner options. That exaggeration isn’t just punchline; it’s a tiny indictment of bravado itself, how quickly masculinity’s performance collapses when confronted with social risk.

Geist’s phrasing borrows the cadence of eyewitness reportage (“have been seen”), as if he’s filing a sober dispatch from a disaster zone. That mock-journalistic distance is the engine of the humor: the language of fact-checkable observation applied to an emotional overreaction. The menu is “posted outside,” a detail that matters. This isn’t private confusion at the table; it’s public exposure. The fear is less about food than about being seen not knowing what to do - not knowing how to pronounce, order, or afford what’s on offer.

Contextually, it’s a classic piece of urban cultural writing: the restaurant as status theater, the menu as a gatekeeping document. Geist is likely skewering a certain kind of intimidating dining scene (dense, precious, untranslated), but the target isn’t cuisine. It’s the way taste gets weaponized into anxiety. The line flatters the reader into complicity: you’re meant to laugh at the fleeing men, then recognize the familiar impulse to bolt when culture turns into a pop quiz.