When I was in college, my roommates and I spent countless hours over coffee and donuts, missing deadlines and deciding what to do with our lives.
We didn’t know what jobs we would get, or where life might take us, but some things we knew for sure:
“I could never live in the suburbs.”
“I’m never having kids.”
“I could never marry a man who wore polyester.”
True to our principles, we found jobs and apartments in New York City; and when we went out to dinner, we were always careful about the seating.
In fancy midtown restaurants, my friends and I would insist on changing tables to get away from crying babies, asking pointedly to be seated in the “No Screaming” section.
“Who ARE these people?” I would demand loudly — and indignantly — of no one in particular. “Don’t they hear their children screaming? Doesn’t it bother them? At least, they should have the decency to look embarrassed!”
Eventually, I met someone and married him.
“And does he wear polyester?” my friends asked me.
“I don’t care what he wears, as long as he’ll wash it himself,” I replied.
And it’s his fault, really, that we moved to the suburbs. He did not appreciate the charm of my Greenwich Village basement apartment.
More to the point, he couldn’t see commuting an hour each way from a place where the odds were better than even of waking up with a cockroach on your face.
It was just as well. All our other friends had already moved out of the city, and we soon grew tired of renting cars just to see them.
Soon we had a mortgage of our own.
But my metamorphosis was not complete. Not until we had a baby of our own, as well.
It was months before I took him out in public. (Okay, it only felt that way.) But when I did, I finally saw the point of shopping malls; supermarkets; drive-through cash machines!
Eventually, I worked up the nerve to take the baby to a diner. I expected the worst, waiting to be pelted, by my fellow customers, with stale rolls and butter pats when he cried.
But he didn’t make a sound, and I actually got to eat a whole meal while it was still warm, for the first time in months.
Emboldened by my success, I ventured farther afield…to a place with cloth napkins.
It had been a bad day — the kind when the baby is teething, and nothing you try is any help.
By the time I sat down, with a friend and her baby, I was a wreck. “Better order quick,” our waitress warned us, “the kitchen’s about to close.”
“Bring us two of whatever you’ve got, as long as there’s fries,” we replied without looking up. We were fully occupied keeping the china away from the little ones.
Eventually, I figured out that the solution was moving the high chairs away from the table. True, then the kids were perilously close to other peoples’ tables, but they were all asking for their checks, anyway, so who cared?
The children were past the stage when throwing food on the floor would amuse them, and by now I was getting pretty cranky myself.
I noticed a table of college kids frowning in our direction. “What do you suppose they’re looking at?” my friend asked me.
“Who cares? Our food is here,” I replied.
At last, I discovered that re-arranging the sugar packets would amuse my child.
I had just worked out a way to eat with one hand and hold the container with the other, and he was having a lovely time picking out a couple of packets at a time and tossing them on the floor, when suddenly, the hostess swooped down on us and snatched the whole thing away.
He screamed, of course. But I didn’t bat an eyelash; I was almost done with my burger.
“I think they don’t want kids here,” my friend whispered.
I was indignant. “Then what do they have high chairs for, if they don’t want babies in this place? What do they expect, opening a restaurant in the suburbs? Who are these people, anyway?”
