I don’t like taking my kids out to eat.
We do it sometimes, and they’re never as bad as I anticipate. But in my mind, if not quite so in reality, they are three little barbarians, too uncouth and uncontained to be taken out among others who are simply trying to enjoy a meal.
At home, it is a constant game of oneupsmanship to see who can belch the loudest, who can be the most disgusting, who can stuff the most of a particular food into his mouth. Jean and I often give up and just stare fixedly at one another, waiting until the boys are done and have deserted the table, and then we’ll set about eating our cold meals in peace.
When we do take them out to eat, it is typically preceded by various threats and promises of what I’m going to do to them if they can’t behave themselves. I try to think of all of the things that they might be apt to do so that I can specifically warn them not to do those things.
“Do not get into a belching contest,” I tell them. “Do not shovel food into your mouth. Do not lay on the ground under the table. Do not hit your brothers.”
The list of potential misbehavior goes on and on. I spend the better part of an hour warning them, and by the time we walk out the door to head to a restaurant I am already as angry as I can get.
So Saturday I was torn because we’d been invited to go to the Taco Stand’s Open House at the new Watkinsville location.
Nearly every Friday night when I was in college, I ate at the Taco Stand. It’s where my friends and I started our weekends. The Taco Stand was great because it was good food that fit well into a college student’s budget.
So, I’ve been eagerly anticipating the opening of the new Taco Stand in Oconee County. I loved my college years, so I cling to anything that reminds me of those times. Sometimes when the kids are with my parents, Jean and I will eat Raman Noodles for dinner just for old time’s sake.
I threatened the kids with all kinds of bodily harm. I pointed my finger, stamped my foot and glared menacingly at all three of them. It didn’t help them that Harrison and Nathan were engaged in fisticuffs over a Nintendo game just as we were getting ready to leave.
“You will behave yourselves,” I commanded four different times, each time stressing different words.
When we got to the restaurant, things went amazingly well. The kids didn’t bicker or belch, nobody spilled their drink or slopped their food. We saw David and Ingrid from church, and I was neither embarrassed nor ashamed.
And then Nathan got back from the soda fountain. It was a crowded open house, there was a lot going on (we had seven people at our table when Rebecca and Nick joined us), and I was only vaguely aware that Nate had made more than one trip to the soda fountain.
But something about the grin on his face told me trouble was brewing. Then the grin turned into a giggle.
There’s a reason that my wife and I very seldom let our children drink caffeine. It’s not that we’re worried about their health, it’s that we’re worried what would happen if they had heightened energy from sugar and caffeine. Somebody could seriously get hurt. But we’d made an exception Saturday night, allowing the kids to get what they wanted, and we’d made a mistake.
As the giggles continued to propel from Nathan, everyone at the table – even his brothers – wanted to know what was so funny. And then, just after draining his drink, he told us: “I mixed the Mountain Dew with Pepsi and Dr. Pepper.”
Jean gagged at the thought of the taste, but I remembered – from some dark corner of my memory – being a kid and mixing Mountain Dew with Pepsi and Dr. Pepper. It’s a powerfully evil combination that zaps all the synapses in an 8-year-old’s brain and turns him into an uncontrollable, vibrating jumble of boy. And Nathan was rapidly turning into the Tasmanian Devil right in front of our eyes.
His unstoppable giggles became unruly laughter, and Jean and I quickly whisked the kids out before they destroyed the new Taco Stand.
As we stuffed the shaking and spluttering Nathan into the back of the car, I was reminded of similar adventures from 15 years ago. “This is why I loved college,” I told Jean.
The comfort is in knowing that it’s not just us and our poor parenting skills. At church the next morning, Ingrid was telling me that they’d had a good time at the Taco Stand, too, but she didn’t know what had gotten into her children and why they were so out of control (“Not me!” her oldest daughter said).
When we’d walked out of the Taco Stand, Jean with her hand over Nathan’s mouth to try to quiet him some until we were at least out of the door, I’d noticed how well-behaved David and Ingrid’s kids were being, and I’d wondered to myself what we’d done wrong. Besides, of course, letting Nathan get his own drink.
So maybe every parent thinks their own child is out of control, and maybe every parents looks at other people’s kids and wishes their own would be so well behaved.
Rob Peecher is author of Four Things My Wife Hates About Mornings.
