Kids Eat Free

There's been an ongoing and quite heated debate recently about certain restaurants in the area banning children under the age of six. While this is a trend nation-wide, only when it started invading my own area did I finally start to care.

The summer before my junior year of college, I waitressed at a super hip restaurant on the lake. While I had never waitressed before, I'd been around water and drunk people, so I thought I'd do okay. The first half of the summer was a learning curve and the second half was bank rolling. I made an obscene amount of money waitressing. I don't say that in the way dipshit overpaid actors talk about how they put in 16-hour days and spent a week with a cancer-stricken homeless man to prepare for a role. Waitressing is actually the hardest job I've had to date. Emotionally draining and physically exhausting. Double shifts on your feet, dealing with inebriated and sunburned people, getting yelled at by men who are really picky about how their steaks are prepared.

What made that job great, despite the lasting bonds among the wait staff, was the amount of tips we received. What made the job shitty, was when people brought in their children. Their snotty, drooling, Cheerio-eating, sugar packet throwing nimrods. They ordered such little and cheap menu items and made a mess of my section.

So had I heard this debate about banning children in restaurants back then, I would have said, "Shit yeah!" Parents without their children are clean and drink a lot.

But now that I have a child, I can look back and see things a little differently. While I didn't like waiting on snot-nosed kids, the parents were usually so self-conscious bringing a child to a restaurant that they overcompensated in the tip. And I had a bus boy. So what was my deal?

This is no different of a revelation than when I finally moved into Jim's house. The house is on an extremely busy street that is four lanes and flows people to and from the mall and three major highways. While the speed limit says 35, not a soul abides. Including myself, who, before moving here, sped by constantly on my way to get a mani/pedi or jump on the highway to get out of town. How many times had I sped by Jim's house not even knowing he existed? And how many times had he seen me speed by and then ran out to wave his fists and yell profanities at me? It's truly a Gift of the Magi kind of love.

But now that I live here, I revel in people getting tickets. I wave graciously at the cop when he sits in our driveway to catch speeders. I giggle a little as I watch him pull someone over. I pump my brakes as I'm coming home. I honk at people driving too fast. And just last week, when a lady didn't see me as I was pulling into our driveway and ran into the back of my car going 40 miles an hour, I felt a little vindicated when she got a doozy of a ticket.

And the change of attitude is not just because I live here now. I mean, most epiphanies do happen with extreme convenience in timing. But it's also because I've realized that when I was driving by before I lived here, I was always going someplace else. But living here now, means I'm here. I'm the permanent one. Not those headed to the mall. Or the highway. Or to their own homes.

So I think the permanent should get precedence over the transient.

Home owners trump car drivers. Sure, you think you need to get somewhere quickly. But remember as you speed down a busy street with houses, that people are trying to live a life there. And yes, being a patron at a restaurant next to a crying baby is super frustrating and annoying, but remember that you don't have to take that baby home with you. Be patient with the new parents trying to enjoy their lives and when you're done eating you can drive slowly past other houses to get to your own quiet home.

The only constant losers in this plan are those who have children, and get a night out without them, and spend it next to a crying one over candlelight and wine.