Monday, June 07, 2004
Yesterday, for the very first time since Sophie's birth, I got a personal taste of public discrimination against small children/parents of small children.
Every few weeks, my friend K and I gather up our girlbabies and spend a day shopping and dining out. Usually we eat someplace "kid friendly", which means a noisy chain restaurant with a changing station in the restroom. (To those of us with kids, having a convenient place to do a diaper change is a pretty important factor in what determines a "good" restaurant.) Last night we decided to try something new, a quaint tavern/restaurant that received great reviews in a major area newspaper. Parents appreciate good food, too, even if we have approximately 5 seconds to enjoy it!
The restaurant turned out to be a smallish, slightly upscale place. We were steered into a secluded back room with only four tables. Seeing that we were the only guests in the room, we jokingly made a comment about it being the "baby room". About 10 minutes later, the hostess seated two middle-aged women in the room. K and I were in the middle of our conversation and our girls were busy gnawing on bread, so we didn't take much notice of the women until one of them received a call on her cell phone.
Which had one of those annoying song ringtones.
Which she let ring all the way through several verses before answering.
Which turned into several minutes of loud conversation right there at her table while her companion waited and we tried not to overhear.
K and I rolled our eyes about it but kept chatting and handing the babies bits of bread. The babies were perfectly content just sitting there chewing their bread like cows chew cud. Finally, the woman ended her phone call and threw a look over her shoulder at us. That must have been the first time she noticed us, because she said, "Oh, there are kids in here!" And with that, she called the waitress to their table and insisted on being moved to another spot in the restaurant.
My jaw dropped open in total shock. Neither of the babies was acting disruptive---they were both too busy eating to make any noise. In fact, I'd say they were both damn near perfect dinner companions last night. We've all had restaurant experiences that were made unpleasant by someone else's out-of-control child, but GEEZ, don't judge a kid (or the kid's parent) to be a problem if that doesn't appear to be the case!
Thinking back to the years before Sophie, when I had considerably less experience with and tolerance for children's public outbursts, I hope I was never a total jerk to a parent who didn't deserve it.
# posted by Amanda at 8:38 PM |
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