Not an option

All I wanted was a nice quiet dinner — a dinner I didn’t have to cook or deal with the dirty dishes. It had been a long day, and I just wanted to slink down into an out-of-the-way booth in a dark restaurant, have dinner and let the day quietly slip away. I just don’t have it in me to relive the entire restaurant saga, but let’s just say I couldn’t have chosen a worse place to relax and let the woes of the world vanish.

Let me preface this rant by saying I love all kinds of people. To me, it doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, fat or skinny, tall or short, successful or not ... I could really care less. I learned a long, long time ago to judge that proverbial book by its cover will disappoint you every time. In other words, you’ve got to read some pages to find out what lives inside ... Likewise, you’ve got to get to know the hearts of people. After that, what you see on the outside is purely irrelevant.

Back to the restaurant ...

They seemed like a nice enough family when they came in and sat down in the next booth. The woman/mother and I exchanged brief smiles, as she herded her children into the booth. There were three or four kids; I didn’t count. Her husband followed close behind and also took a seat.

OK, the kids were loud, but let’s face it, they are kids. Kids are loud nowadays. While I would have never been allowed to be so loud in a public place when I was a child, much has changed. I can (in most cases) ignore loud. I can deal with it, tune it out and thank God I’m not the one in charge of trying to keep a rowdy bunch of kids quiet in a reasonably quiet restaurant. In other words, I can live with loud.

But here’s what I couldn’t deal with ...

The kids kept burping. I’m not talking about a small, quiet burp (though I’m not sure that really matters), but rather a loud, obnoxious burp that caused more than just my head to turn toward the table. Now I’ve known kids to laugh when they burp, and I’ve even seen a bunch of kids get caught up in the moment when one burps and the others squeal with delight. But there was no laughter, and more important, there was no adult who reprimanded them for their impolite behavior.