I went to my favorite restaurant, a small trattoria, with friends last Saturday night. We were meeting at 8:00p.m. And for a change, I got there on time, but arrived before they did.
As I stood outside waiting, a man(we'll call Benny) and two young(under 5 years old) girls, barged out of the restaurant with Benny still speaking to the people inside, "the kids won't stay in their seats.", he was saying in a panicked, whiny voice. "they are not usually like this.", he continued, "It's only in this restaurant.". He then walked back in the restaurant with the girls. Thirty seconds later out came the girls shortly followed by, what I assumed to be their father, Benny, again. He began whining to, not yelling at, the girls, "if you don't behave, we won't come back to this restaurant again.". This was about as effective as you guessed and even his spawn looked at their father like, great, daddy is a dick head. The girls started to play in the busy parking lot and the pitch in the father's voice reached castrato. One idle threat after another came out of his mouth. This continued until the mother came out of the restaurant with a baby in her arms. Seeing that the father was about to wig-out, she shut his pansy ass up by saying with authority, "I'm taking the baby for a walk.". He opens his mouth to begin protest, but the wife, who has more balls than he does, spats at him, "I'll be back before the food is served.".
So now the other two of their loins begin to run in the parking lot and wham, one falls and skins her knee. Before he even goes to console her, Benny starts shrilling at her, "I told you this would happen.". The girl screams for her mother and the father's voice, in close to a manly tone screams, "Gina(obviously his wife's name), YOU'RE KILLING ME!", if only the world would be so lucky. The wife comes back, looks in the restaurant and with a deserved total lack of respect in her eyes yells at the husband, "The food isn't even at the table yet. What's your problem?".
The man-girl now sits in an outside chair and says to his daughters, "I'll tell you a story, I am great at telling stories.", one of the girls starts twirling as the village idiot tries to think of a beginning for his 'great' story. "Once Upon A Time...", was so far beyond this guy, that after several moments he yells, in his Michael Jackson voice, at the twirling girl, "What are you doing?". The girls slows her twirling and taunts, "I'm going to act out the great story.". I realized then, when she gets older she'll be a great story teller; most will be horror stories to her shrink.
My friends finally show up and the story-less fool is saved by the server bring the food to his table, so they go into the restaurant in front of us.
My table was having a lot of fun, but the funniest moment of the night was when Benny and his family began to leave. He addresses the waitress by name and announces he'll be back next year.
I mark the calendar on my phone, avoid going out to dinner July 24, 2011 at the trattoria.
If you are wondering why this upsets me so much, when the kids did not bother us in the restaurant, you are missing the point. It Is not the kids I am upset with, it's the so called parents. These kids will eventually grow up and spawn obnoxious brats of their own. With any luck the chain will be broken.
This is sad for so many reasons. One, the meaningless threats without following through with them. How does he expect them to listen if they don't believe what he says? How does he expect them to respect him and look up to him if they know that he's not going to do anything but threat?
ReplyDeleteTwo - the lack of respect between the parents is what gets me the most. Children look to their parents as the most important example of how to treat other people. Ugh. That makes me sick that they seemed to lack respect for each other.
Maybe we've been lucky. We typically go out to dinner once a week and Ellie and Addie are both usually very well behaved. If Ellie starts to melt down, Michael takes her outside to cry until she's ok to come in. If she's not then we go home. She doesn't like that so we rarely have to go to that extreme. Maybe it's that we go out to dinner relatively often and make sure we engage the kids in activities while sitting at the table? I don't know, but I'm thankful that it's rare that my patience is tested like this.