Bratty Kids and Salad Bars Don't Mix

I couldn't sleep tonight, so I was sitting here reading The Misanthropic Bitch, which brought to mind an incident Seven and I experienced a couple of weeks ago in a restaurant...

I was attempting to saturate the lettuce I'd piled on my plate with dressing, when the woman in front of me suddenly leaned back, reached across me, and grabbed a giant handful of napkins. I had to dodge out of her way, and narrowly missed having her elbow land smack in the middle of my salad. She didn't so much as glance at me, as she was too busy answering the questions being steadily fired at her by the loud little girl with unkempt hair in front of her. "MOM! I want THAT!! Can I have THAT??" Botched Ponytail Girl's tray was empty except for a beanie baby and and an empty glass, while the mother's tray was laden with both her meal and her daughter's. The child was perfectly capable of carrying her own food. She wasn't crippled or retarded (or so we thought at this point). She had hands, no matter how grimy.

Seven and I sat in a booth and made ourselves comfortable. The little girl with the botched ponytail ran by us at breakneck speed. I looked down at the end of the aisle, and there were two rowdy-looking boys sitting with the girl's mother. Great. She had more of them. "That kid is such a brat." Seven said, nodding towards the little girl. I caught a quick glimpse of her as she ran by a second time and recognized her as Botched Ponytail Girl from the line. The other two kids, we'll call them "Hellion" and "Heathen" ran back and forth to the salad bar a couple of times, and we discussed the consequences of tripping them, and considered whether or not it'd be worth the utter glee we'd find in it. After Hellion almost ate it when his foot snagged on a seam in the carpet, we decided that it'd be well worth it to see him get carpet burn on his chin.

We considered how this woman could have ended up with the responsibility of these children at a restaurant. Hellion and Heathen appeared to be about the same age, and didn't look anything alike, yet there was no way in hell that woman was their baby-sitter or daycare representative or what have you. No way in hell would anyone besides their mother sit there eating salad and staring off into space, oblivious to the chaos her children were creating.

There were croutons and lettuce and God knows what else all over the floor surrounding the three kids. Botched Ponytail Girl shoveled spaghetti in her mouth (much like the woman in Magical Mystery Tour) and dropped sauce all over the table and her clothing. Hellion and Heathen made fart noises and grunted like pigs. The Brats took turns spilling his or her soda in four minute intervals. Mom didn't look up from her salad. The manager of the restaurant had appointed an employee to stand just around the corner from the Brat family to go clean up every time there was a "major" accident. Good thing, too, because it was time for dessert.

Dessert entailed the Brats completely obliterating the dessert bar into a giant mass of inedible disgust. Ponytail Girl was first to emerge from the accident scene. She had a cone that was bigger than her head with ice cream dripping down the sides. It was covered with cookie crumbs, M&M's, chocolate syrup (which was also doing its share of dripping), and peanuts. When Hellion and Heathen ran by (we had our eyes glued on the seam in the carpet, praying silently for one or both of them to bust ass), it was noted that their ice cream cones were somehow bigger and more drippy than Ponytail Girl's had been. Seven gasped and nodded towards the dessert bar, and I turned around to view what must have been a restaurant employee's utter hell. Everything the Brats had had piled on their ice cream cones was also represented in a five-foot radius on the floor. The manager sent the Brats' personal clean-up employee over to sweep up the debris and another employee to change out all the ice cream toppings, which were now intermixed to the point where one wasn't sure which topping each container had originally held.

Mom still wasn't concerned with her children's behavior. She stared at her plate and fiddled with her napkin. I wondered if she was thinking about where she could have gone wrong with raising them, and cursing herself for not going on the pill sooner. When she looked up, however, the look in her eyes told me she had no clue her children were the spawn of Satan.

The restaurant employee had just finished sweeping up the mess around the dessert bar when Hellion and Heathen decided they wanted more ice cream. I swear to God. They made another huge disgusting mess, matched only in the history of messes by the one they'd made five minutes before. We made a few loud comments, but nobody but the woman who snickered at the next table seemed to hear them. This is about the time we decided to leave, as we couldn't bear to watch the poor girl sweep up ice cream toppings again.

BONUS: There is a comic about this! Go to www.eville.net/comics/brats.html!