Naked At The Olive Garden

Going out to dinner with a two year old is always a mistake. At least I think it is, because I don’t remember the other three being like this at two. Maybe it’s like childbirth. The memory of the pain just disappears after the ordeal, something your mind does to fool you into having another child. Which would explain why I thought it was a swell idea to go to the Olive Garden with the husband and two girls (the boys escaped to hang out with friends).

It started out fine. We declined the booster seat, because in the hands of a two year old, it becomes a murder weapon. I forgot that they have what my six year old refers to as “wheel chairs.” So, she spent the majority of dinner ramming the woman behind us and trying to crack the teeth out of her skull. The salad on her plate ended up on the floor in a nice tidy pile (should I be happy it was in a pile and not strewn around the floor?). A grape was used as a volleyball when she tossed it in her sisters spaghetti and it was lobbed back by a six year old who thought that was appropriate behavior. The husband might as well have been at another table since he was in la la land (probably day dreaming about the family he could have had).

Whether the other three were like this or not, I can say this two year old upped the ante when she took her diaper off at the table. Just stood up on her chair and whipped it off. I wonder how many diners thought, ‘Wow, this is a first.’ My daughter officially turned a family restaurant into a strip joint. It’s times like this when I look at my husband and think, ‘You must have been a horrible child.’ I can only imagine what he did as a child to make his mother lay down the “curse”. Because, let’s face it, one of us was bad enough to get “a child just like you,” and I was a good girl. Well, I wasn’t bad enough that I should have a child who would do a strip tease on a chair in the Olive Garden.

In advance, thank you for not mentioning that’s exactly what I do have.