While browsing some blogs today, I came across this entry at Jimbo.info. It reminded me of an incident that I'd forgotten until reading his entry, but once I started to tell the story, I realized my comment was ten miles long so I thought I'd bring it here and link to him.
Rob and I were in a Brazilian restaurant recently in Newark, New Jersey (airport business, that's all - I always feel the need to explain why I was in Newark) and this couple was allowing their little kid to roam the restaurant freely while they enjoyed their dinner. The kid was a terror, and not once did I see them chide him or try to calm him down. He knocked a glass off the table when crawling around in circles atop his chair, shattering it on the floor. I don't even think the parents made the faintest gasp or uttered the smallest "damn." That's the moment in the restaurant where my own mother would have said "GODDAMNIT IF YOU DON'T CALM DOWN AND SIT STILL THIS MOMENT I AM GOING TO WHIP YOUR ASS!" But these people barely glanced in the boy's direction and just signaled for the mess to be cleaned up.
Throughout our meal I watched as the boy went around the restaurant, climbing up onto chairs, disassembling and leaving rumpled the napkins that had been carefully folded and placed at each setting. I watched as he knocked silverware off tables and generally traversed the establishment as though he were a monkey and it was his jungle.
The parents did not make a move to stop him. Occasionally they would glance at him with utter disinterest.
I felt an anger begin to pulse through me. An indignance, not for myself, but for the waiter or busboy who had spent his afternoon folding napkins and setting tables only to have it all undone right before the dinner rush by some spoiled little shit whose parents apparently had eaten a malignant brain tumor for breakfast, causing a total lack of concern for the delinquency of their offspring.
I had to calm my indignance and swallow back the desire to personally approach the parents. Rob rightly discouraged me and a restaurant employee soon came to try and dissuade the brat from continuing his little reign of terror. The employee plied him with a children's book found beneath the host podium. Even as the man tried to distract the kid, the parents occasionally looked over, but did not make any move to assist the man in controlling their own child.
I will never forget the look on the father's face. A look of absolute disinterest and entitlement. It was not his responsibility to control the kid. If the restaurant staff didn't want the child to unravel their hard work, that was their problem. Not something that a parent need concern themselves with.
I don't know about you, but my mother and father would have been so embarassed and ticked off if one of their children had succeeded in creating a great deal of unnecessary work and cleanup for the staff at a restaurant.
Sandy wrote a post recently about how people never really know how they are going to be as a parent until they actually have kids. And I have to agree that it's easy for those without children to say "I would never do that!" or "my child will never behave like that!" But there are certain situations where you can say definitively and without a doubt "I would never tolerate that type of behavior from my own child and I would seriously NEVER do that." This was one of those times.
Posted by Maria at January 11, 2005 05:19 PM | TrackBack"Abortion... What a beautiful choice!"
We don't need THOSE commercials. We have other people's rug-rats.
BTW, not to say anything good about poor old Newark (victim of a CIA-sponsered Rand Corporation study on local authorities' response to civil unrest, and the feasibility of imposing martial law and postponing the 1972 elections, nationally --They deliberately provoked a riot, for research-- a lot of the city was destroyed-- It all came out later, during hearings into domestic and foreign illegalities by the CIA, which resulted in reigning them in, which the Repukes now want to STOP doing, even after Abu Graibh...), but they do have some excellent Spanish and Portuguese restaurants in the Ironbound. As a seaport, Newark attracted a lot of Iberian fishermen. The paellas and sangrias are to DIE for. But so is parking...
.
SO true. I get these little jerks in class ten years later, and with a complete and utter ignorance of any form of respect for their teachers, these little monsters convince their parents they are tortured and abused by us. Then these sorryass excuses for parental units come in and let US have it because their little charmer is flunking the hell out of his subjects. These sperm/egg providers blame everyone but themselves for how their little pukes have turned out, as evidenced by how they allow them the run of the restaurant with a complete disregard for common sense behaviors in the public arena. *
* Notation that I DO like my job and 90% of my kids are wonderful. The remaining 10% are the rotten apple family units that you described.
Wow, interesting stuff about the CIA operation. Can't say that comes as a surprise.
The food was excellent at the restaurant we went to. But yeah, parking was a bitch and it was a particularly cold night (which I can't complain about now since it only makes it all the more memorable). I was arriving home from Oregon and Rob had just picked me up at the airport so I was really just too tired to kill the kid myself.
"Abortion... What a beautiful choice!"
We don't need THOSE commercials.
Is that for real? You've seen that?
Posted by: Maria at January 11, 2005 06:51 PMVickie, I don't know why parents always blame someone else. Am I going to do that when I'm a parent? Is it just something that comes with parenthood?
A good friend and I were just laughing recently about how our parents always blamed our friends when we were younger for the trouble we got into and vice versa, the friend's parents would blame us. My mom used to think my best friend in jr. highschool was responsible for my behavior, while Jean's mom was sure that I was the root cause of her behavior. Truth be told, we were BOTH rotten.
Posted by: Maria at January 11, 2005 06:55 PM.
(I was joking: Mocking an anti-choice commercial. I think of the alternative commercial whenever I see out-of-control yard-apes.)
.
It all starts in Early Childhood...
Which is where we spend the LEAST money, of COURSE...
Sure, kids will be kids when they're alone in Kids World. That's fine. But when they enter the larger Adult World, they'd BETTER behave. You wanna see a scene, do that shit in a restaurant where I'm eating...
I can cook better than most of these places, and cheaper, so I'm there for the ambiance, the hospitality, the comfort of being waited on hand and food, like a freekin' king...
Whip out a BLEEPING Motorola two- way- radio- cell- phone, and I will politely asks you to turn it off, after which I will HUMILIATE you in front of the entire dining room, after which, I will shove it up your ass.
And brats, well, it's the parents' fault, isn't it? I could care less if they boil or freeze their kid at a home: In public, they'd better have them on a tight leash, or I will physically escort Mummy AND Daddie from the premises. I've done it.
Now, poor old Newark has a substantial Portuguese, Spanish and Italian, as well as African American population. Most of the other ethnics have left, since the CIA sponsored riots, which spilled over into other communities. Not that they couldn't have happened on their own. They already had: Conditions were bad, race relations were awful, Nixon was President.
But the Rand Corporation made it worse, at the behest of the CIA. They faked an incident, broadcast it, and sent in agents provocateurs. It wasn't about race: Like Nixons "Law & Order" bushwa, it was about power and democracy: Supressing it. They were staging a training exercise for a planned suspension of the '72 McGovern vs. Nixon Presidential elections. Seems absurd, given the fact that George lost 49 States, including his own. But, so did Watergate, the year later.
The CIA is forbidden by its' charter from doing ANYTHING domestically: That's FBI & Secret Service territory. But they did it, anyway. Nixon disrespected EVERYTHING: For purely partisan Republican political purposes. The CIA got caught, and restructured; due to whistle-blowers, and truly bi-partisan, REAL Congressional investigations, with TEETH. Those are the events that Repukes are whining about today: "9/11 happened because we put a leash on the CIA." Forgetting that the Afghan "Freedom Fighters" were set, armed and trained by the CIA, then allowed to run loose, all the way to Lower Manhattan, rural Pennsuylvania, and even the Pentagon.
1976
FINAL REPORT
UNITED STATES SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE
INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES
"COINTELPRO"
"Commission on CIA Activities within the United States: Appendix V ..."
http://history-matters.com/
"THE SECRET SHADOW GOVERNMENT
A STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS"
BTW, guess whose Daddy was CIA Director, in this period? There's experience, in the family, with manipulating elections.
.
Maria..I'm laughing..me & my friend Jeane..same exact thing..my mother blamed Jeane for everything and vice versa..we didn't need to talk one another into anything, we were both willing..haha. Our moms just didn't want to admit that their girls were not the angels they thought! Now about restaurants..even though I'm a mom..I swear I wish they had "no children" sections. As an ex waitress I can tell ya..these kids running around can cause serious accidents..
Posted by: Sandy at January 12, 2005 06:31 AMYou know what the biggest problem is? Some people are too afraid to dicipline their children, it is un-PC to swat the little brat's ass, you know?
I'm a big believer in time-outs but they don't always work and sometimes, just sometimes, a swat on the ass is necessary. You can't reason with children - they need to be told what to do. They need direction and they need and desire it. If they don't get it - they will push you and test you. If they still don't get it - they turn into shitty litle assholes and then grow up to be bullies and bigger assholes.
Posted by: Rosemary the Queen of All Evil at January 12, 2005 12:48 PM