Hypothetical:
How would you handle this situation?
It's your birthday and to celebrate you make reservations at a new, hip restaurant with two of your closest friends. Since you endured the stress of 9 months of pregnancy and the pain of childbirth, you decide you'd like to bring your 10 week old child to dinner with you rather than leave him home alone to fend for himself for the evening. Besides, he's adorable, he's well behaved, and above all, he's cultured in the art of fine dining.
You arrive at the hypothetical new, hip restaurant on time and give your name to the hostess but not before she takes one long scathing look at your stroller whilst flames ignite out of her ears/ eyes, her head spins around 420 degrees, and she vomits green foam for 10 minutes. You are somewhat startled by this behavior, but continue to await a response that may signify where your table is located for the evening. Once the Hostess from Hell regains her composure, she mumbles something about "it being a busy evening" and "if it wasn't a busy evening they could accommodate a stroller" -yada, yada. You lose the last part of her speech whilst your head detaches from your body and explodes in a catastrophic display of anatomy all over the hip, new crowd at the restaurant.
Once the Snatch Face of a hostess realizes she has provoked the four corners of hell upon herself by inferring you leave the restaurant and a perfectly good reservation for 5 people because you have a perfectly well behaved child in a small and inconspicuous stroller with you (God forbid), she scurries off to get assistance from her manager. After a small army is assembled to deal with this evident fopah of the restaurant world, your patience and the patience of your party is wearing dangerously thin and bordering on death-spree rampage. By now the entire restaurant is staring at you and condemning your behavior amongst the worst things capable of a human being, not to mention your boobs are on fire, your hormones are flowing like the River Nile, and your feet are swollen to the size of watermelons thanks to the first time you've worn heels in a year.
Some sort of consensus is reached among the restaurant army and a small, beetle man escorts your husband away to assess a possible seating option. He returns a short while later motioning everyone over to finally be seated at your table. After running over as many high healed shoes and polished loafers as you can en route, you arrive at the table. It takes a good 10 minutes to figure out where to put the stroller and position yourselves before you can sit down and immediately you grab the wine menu and start ordering by the case. Dinner goes off without a hitch from there. The baby sleeps, the wine and food come and go, dessert is enjoyed, the bill is paid, and you take your exit, stopping only to run over as many loafers and toes as possible once again, this time for sport. You seek out the beetle man to give him a healthy tip on your way out but he is no where to be found. Upsetting, but you'll let the karma gods know where to find him now that he's redeemed himself.
Getting to the question: Would you have bowed to The Man, left the restaurant with your tail between your legs, and ate at McDonald's, or would you have stood your ground for procreating people everywhere and enjoyed the hell out of your birthday meal?
And that's a question for the delegates.
[In completely unrelated news, try Fig and Olive, a new great restaurant that's also kid-friendly.]
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