Posts Tagged ‘about me’

Recently, a restaurant in Pennsylvania decided to ban small children. McDain’s Restaurant and Golf Center had many instances of their patrons being disturbed by screaming children and their indifferent parents, so they decided it was best to ban children under the age of 6 from the restaurant. My favorite quote from the article is from the owner of McDain’s:

You know, their child — maybe as it should be — is the center of their universe. But they don’t realize it’s not the center of the universe!

Screaming Kids in Restaurants - NOT CUTE!

You can imagine the righteous indignation from breeders. Children are people too! Kids can’t be expected to behave the same as adults. Besides, adults can also be loud. Why aren’t they banning drunk, loud adults? You know the drill. They immediately grab their pitchforks and scream “AGEISM!” at anyone who demands the right to have a quiet, leisurely meal free from screaming children. What they fail to realize is that it wouldn’t be a problem if they were doing their jobs as parents.

Yeah, that’s right, breeders. I’m calling you to the carpet. If you weren’t a miserable excuse for a parent, no one would ever complain about screaming children in restaurants. Yes, I realize babies cry, toddlers have meltdowns, and young kids get cranky. They can’t help it because kids naturally have lots of energy, short little attention spans, and limited patience for long, drawn-out, adult dinner conversations in fancy restaurants. You have no argument from me on that point. However, you supposedly possess more than two functioning brain cells, and you are the adult in charge of attending to the needs of your children. The only option you have is to remove your tired, cranky, bored children from the restaurant so as not to disturb everyone else. Get a doggy bag, pay your bill, and take your little ones home so they can nap or play or whatever it is they need to do. If you don’t do that, you are a rude, inconsiderate asshole, not only to the other diners but to your own kids! And, I might add, you aren’t just disturbing crotchety old childfree people. You are also disturbing diners with children who aren’t screaming and having meltdowns. They, too, would like to dine in peace just as much as I would. I would bet large sums of money on that. Anyway, the very fact that some restaurants have now resorted to outright bans on children is a testament to the fact that many so-called “parents” are breaching the social contract on several levels.

McDain’s is not the first restaurant to ban kids. Olde Salty’s in North Carolina also banned children. Note that Olde Salty’s only banned screaming children, but breeders still whine about that being terrible and ageist, which I find amusing. See, some breeders say that any ban on kids is wrong. Their argument goes something like this:

Well, why don’t they just say loud people aren’t allowed. Why is it just about kids?! My child doesn’t scream. My child is a little angel and has perfect table manners and knows the difference between a salad fork and a dinner fork! He also loves $100-an-ounce A5 Kobe beef, and I have every right to take my kid to a five-star restaurant. How else is he supposed to learn how to behave at one? I would be okay with this if they just had a policy about loud customers, but banning children is just discrimination!

Except, when push comes to shove, they aren’t okay with anyone who even hints that misbehaving children won’t be tolerated. They’ve demonstrated this time and time again. Do you need another example? Fine. Here you go. A coffee shop in Illinois called A Taste of Heaven simply erected a sign that said the following:

Children of all ages have to behave and use their indoor voices when coming to A Taste of Heaven

Note that the sign said “children of all ages”, which is, to my knowledge, inclusive of adults: a.k.a. kids at heart. Did that sit well with breeders? If you said “no”, you get a cookie! They bitched and moaned and demanded a boycott of the coffee shop. I was tickled pink when A Taste of Heaven’s business tripled instead. Suck it, assholes!

So, for those who feel this is a knee-jerk reaction and borderline discrimination against kids and parents, your anger is directed at the wrong people. This isn’t the fault of evil, child-hating people who feel kids shouldn’t be allowed in public. I don’t know anyone who sits in a restaurant and glares at well-behaved children. I hardly notice well-behaved children. They aren’t even on my radar. You shouldn’t be mad at the restaurant owners who have decided to ban children, either. You should be angry with breeders who are shirking their responsibilities as parents. Those people are ruining it for everyone: parents with children who behave, parents who hired a babysitter so they could have a dinner date and reconnect, empty nesters trying to eat their Early Bird Special in peace, and childfree people. Go after those irresponsible, rude breeders with your pitchforks instead. They are the source of the problem. Restaurants deciding to ban children is merely the symptom. I’ll leave you with this choice quote from the owner of A Taste of Heaven:

“Part of parenting skills is teaching kids they behave differently in a restaurant than they do on the playground,” Mr. McCauley said in an interview. “If you send out positive energy, positive energy returns to you. If you send out energy that says I’m the only one that matters, it’s going to be a pretty chaotic world.”

One last thing: let me bitchslap the people who say, “Well, how am I supposed to teach my kids to behave in a restaurant if I can’t take them to restaurants?” Nuh-uh. Nice try, but no cigar. I’m going to let you in on what is apparently a well-kept parenting secret from long ago. My family used it on me. Have you got a notepad and pen? No? I’ll wait while you find one.

Got that notepad and pen? Good. Write this down, and read it repeatedly until you finally absorb the wisdom of my parents and grandparents. You teach kids how to behave in restaurants by enforcing table manners at your own dinner table. Ta-da! That’s how it’s done. My ass had to sit down, use my inside voice, not bang my silverware on the table, not play with my food, chew with my mouth closed, etc. during meals, regardless of what we were eating. I absolutely was NOT allowed to scream or throw a tantrum at the dinner table. The “fancy table manners” weren’t just for Thanksgiving, either. I had to act appropriately whether we were eating a turkey dinner or take-out from Kentucky Fried Chicken. Thus, when my parents finally did get around to taking me to a “fancy” restaurant (a Chinese restaurant, for the record), I knew how to act.  That’s it. That’s the big secret. Your dinner table is their training camp for restaurants and public dining. When they can behave appropriately at your dinner table, they can probably behave at one in McDain’s, Olde Salty’s, or a Taste of Heaven. Of course, if your dinner table is a free-for-all where screaming, standing on your chair, talking with your mouth full, and food-throwing is allowed, I would argue that none of you are ready for public dining – adults included. Stay home, all of you!

Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort by others to teach them good manners. ~Author Unknown

You’re welcome.

I recently saw a news segment about one of those crazy “Pageant Moms” giving her daughter Botox injections and waxes. If you haven’t seen it, you should – and prepare to be shocked.

This child is 8 years old. Children don’t even HAVE wrinkles, yet this stupid twat insists she only resorted to injecting her daughter with Botox after other stupid twats on the pageant circuit commented on her daughter’s wrinkles. What. The. FUCK?! In my world, the appropriate response to someone who tells a child she “needs to do something about her wrinkles” is

1) to refrain from knocking the bitch into the dirt, and

2) to suggest that she seek therapy immediately and have no contact with children – including her own -  EVER.

Look, I’m not a parent or a therapist, but I know what kind of damage this can do to a person. I am a woman who was once a little girl, and I have my own battle wounds from this type of shit. My mother wasn’t perfect in this regard, either. She wasn’t telling me I had wrinkles and giving me face cream when I was 8, but she had her own body issues and passed those on to me (probably unknowingly). I know my story isn’t unique among women, either, and believe it’s more than anecdotal.

My Mom didn’t inherit her Irish Mother’s petite frame.  She inherited her Cherokee Grandmother’s sturdy frame: muscular with a nice padding of jiggly bits on top, concentrated mainly in her upper body.  I, in turn, inherited her build. So, when she complained about how fat she was, I figured I was fat too. I spent most of my childhood and teen years thinking I was fat. When I would say I was fat, my Mom would just sigh and say, “I know, honey; I wish you had inherited your Father’s build too!” (My father was lean, lanky, and 6’2″.)  “Don’t let your weight get too out of control, though, because it’s harder to lose as you get older. I’m starting this new diet tomorrow. It wouldn’t hurt you to do it with me!”

My Mom never flat-out said I was fat, but she often encouraged me to join her on her crazy diets because I “had her genes.” I internalized that message, as indirect and slight as it was, and spent most of my young life thinking I looked like a harbor seal. This self-loathing was deepened upon being bombarded with media images like this:

Brooke Shields Calvin Klein Ad - 1980

Brooke Shields was 15 years old when that photo was taken. She was lean, tall, and had hardly an ounce of fat on her pre-pubescent body. She didn’t even have breasts yet in that photo! I, with my DD-breasts (which appeared when I was 12), thought I was a porcine beast. I spent a lot of time wearing baggy clothes that were 2-3 times larger than necessary in order to hide my hideous body from the world. And I dieted.  Oh, how I dieted.  I tried yogurt diets, grapefruit diets, hard-boiled eggs & tomato diets, low-fat diets – lots and lots of diets. I never lost more than 5-10 lbs, probably because I never really had a lot to lose in the first place for my particular body type. No amount of exercise (I was an active kid) or dieting removed my boobs; those were there to stay, much to my chagrin.

I tried everything short of actually developing an eating disorder like anorexia or bulimia, and the thing that probably saved me from that was the positive feedback I got from people in college. During college, I started getting compliments about my body from both men and women. One of my female friends talked me into wearing a bikini for the first time during Spring Break, insisting that I looked stunning in one despite my reservations. It still took a long while for me to believe I was actually pretty even though I wasn’t rail thin. After all, the media was pushing Kate Moss as the feminine ideal at the time, even calling it “Heroin Chic”:

Kate Moss - Super Thin 90s Model

One time I lamented about not having a “great body” like Kate Moss, and my boyfriend (now husband) said, “Are you CRAZY?! Your body is amazing. Other women would kill for your body, and it’s soft in all the right place.” Gee, is it any secret why I married him?

Regardless of my awesome husband, I’ve spent my fair share of time trying to overcome the early negative programming. Now that I’m 40, I’m okay with my body most of time. But every so often that ugly little monster rears its head and says, “You’re fat.” It’s usually after I’ve gone shopping only to find a rack full of Size 00 (that’s a double ZERO) in something I like.  Rationally, I know that means the larger sizes are gone because someone else got to them first. However, it’s hard not to think you’re grotesquely obese while staring at the actual measurements of Size 00 – a size, by the way, which would hardly fit a young girl, much less an adult woman. I assure you that I don’t shop in stores that cater to Juniors or Children. I’m talking about Banana Republic, Ann Taylor, J.Crew. I did mention I was 40, right? Yep. I still struggle with these feelings as a 40-year-old woman. That’s probably a good 30 years of loathing how I look. Awesome, right?!

Now, take some time to ponder the psychological damage being done to an 8-year-old girl whose insane mother is injecting her with Botox and giving her waxes and self-tanning sessions. That woman is a horrible, unfit parent, and what she is doing is nothing less than mental/emotional child abuse. She and the doctor who gave her the Botox should be in jail right now. And those crazy-ass kid pageants should be outlawed if this is the kind of feedback given to the poor children who are contestants. These idiotic pageant people like to insist that the beauty pageants for kids build self-esteem, but I call BULLSHIT. They ruin it, especially if the kids are subjected to cosmetic procedures, fake tans, and bikini waxes for imaginary flaws! I mean, c’mon – Botox for “wrinkles” on a CHILD. Unbelievable! The only thing childhood beauty pageants build is future raging cases of Body Dysmorphic Disorder.