I quit smoking when I was a teenager. (Started at 11.) Cigarette smoke in my hair and clothes, and then transferred from my clothes to the car, and then into my home stinking up the laundry hamper is –irrationally– much more offensive to me than the second-hand carcinogens. Yes, I know, I’m just being honest. But I have to admit that I sorely miss the smoking sections in restaurants since the ban went into effect here in Pittsburgh.
We try not to make it a habit of eating at family friendly places, opting mostly for bars when we’re stopping for a meal out. Sometimes though you just really don’t want to make your own omelet in the morning and the only places that serve breakfast are places with children’s menus.
Every single time I am starting to come around to the idea that perhaps children aren’t entirely awful (brought on by a sudden uptick in the reproduction of my friends from high school days) we go out for breakfast and I am promptly reminded that it’s not the kids, it’s families that are awful. No, I do mean it. I do.
You might be a perfectly lovely couple, and your children might be the best and brightest of their age levels but I don’t want to sit anywhere near you while I’m trying to have a conversation over a meal. Children apparently stopped being able to whisper some time after I stopped being one, and parents have developed new aural adaptations allowing them to tune them out and go about their discussions undisturbed by their unruly accessories. Or maybe it is a new ability to not be completely mortified by their children’s’ food art and non-stop screaming techniques? I can’t be sure.
If faced with a family-friendly establishment prior to the ban, I could at least hide in the smoking section in a cloud of protection, perhaps behind a partition or on the opposite side of the building from the howling chaotic masses squirming in high chairs and under tables. I didn’t have to witness a child’s meal being applied topically and to the booth, the walls and the floor in a three foot radius around their table while the parents droned on and on about lovely table topics like Amberleigh’s latest diaper rash.
Really though, my fault for wanting pancakes over fish n’ chips n’ a pint. I get that. But what about when they show up at the pub? And what about the screaming infant down in front at the late showing of The Dark Knight? What is wrong with people? You have a baby. You knew life was going to get more expensive. Don’t cry foul when some angry moviegoer (not me, I swear) shouts “GET A SITTER ASSHOLE” at you because everyone else should be able to enjoy their movie outing.
If there were movie theaters and restaurants with separate family areas, I would make it a point to only go to those places. One of the theaters I liked when I lived in Maryland had a Mommy Matinée, giving parents a chance to see new releases without ruining it for everyone else. I don’t understand why more of them don’t have age restrictions on clearly mature films, but mostly I don’t understand why someone would want to subject their special snowflake golden child’s delicate ears to TRX sound blasts.
And for what it is worth, I sat quietly and ate whatever my mother ordered for me in restaurants and spoke in whispers because that’s what she said people did in restaurants and as a toddler, why would I argue with The Law? The first and only time I fussed in public at an age where I could communicate verbally, she leaned in really close and whispered, “All of these people are going to think I’m a bad mommy because you are crying and that makes me sad.” The thought of my mom being sad upset me so much that I did my best to zip it up and be polite — until I joined the Girl Scouts. But that’s another story.
