Ketchup in Your Face

The other night, John, Shaila, Nico and I packed ourselves off and headed out for a night on the town.

It was going to be a pumping Friday night.

Our family lives in a town in Northern Virginia called Ashburn. It's a really family oriented area - lots of neighborhoods, trails, parks and family friendly restaurants and an overall tolerance for whiny kids, temper tantrums and crying babies.

Its a fraternity of very tired but also, very empathetic parents.

So we head over to this restaurant called Glory Days. While it touts itself as a "sports bar" and does, in fact, boast lots of flat screen televisions and does have a bar area, given that it is located where we live, the most popular dish on the menu is likely to be Chicken Nuggets.

So I am sorry. It's more like a bar in sheep's clothing. With a side of ketchup.

We ask to be seated outside, because it's a nice night and I want to make sure we can actually converse as a family. Putting John in front of any television broadcasting any kind of sports - it could even be competitive hot dog eating - is like putting cocaine in front of a coke whore.

So we sit down outside, amidst lots of other families with loud kids and cranky babies.

(BTW, I don't usually say things like "coke whore", but I have been watching Housewives of New Jersey and feel that it has a certain ring to it now. I don't think we have many in Ashburn, however, so I only use the term sparingly).

There are two girls sitting outside amidst the landscape of families, drinking some beers, at the table next to ours. I almost feel sorry for them, because they have the option to go wherever they want and they chose to come to a place where instead of picking up hot guys, they got to hear Shaila singing "Barney" songs.

So, we are sitting there, having a relatively pleasant dinner when Shaila realizes she has been eating her fries without Ketchup and this this was not acceptable. Our waitress was nowhere to be seen, so I thought it would be alright to ask the two girls who were nursing their beers if I could use their ignored bottle of Heinz.

I walked over to their table.

"Do you guys mind if I grab this?" pointing to their ketchup. "We don't have one at our table." I indicated our ketchup-less table.

One of the girls seemed really sweet and was saying, "Sure" while nodding her head. However, her response was trumped by the one from her little friend sitting next to her, who nodded her head while simultaneously shooing me from the table.

Now, I am not one for shooing. Nor do I like being shooed. But I was sure that maybe I had misunderstood something.

So I walk back over to the table where John looks at me and says, "Did she just shoo you?"

"Yeah, I think so. That was weird."

If I was any kind of Housewife from Jersey, I would have already flipped a table over and called her a coke whore (pronounced - whoo-aw), but I am classy like that, so I refrained. Barely

As we sit and enjoy our dinner, now a little more calm with a bottle of ketchup (Thank you very much, Heinz family), I overhear part of the blonde's conversation. She tells her friends she is going to get some hot guys to meet them out and to just watch her in action . . .

She picks up her phone.

"Hey, it's me," she tells her little cell phone lover.

"So me and my friend . . . of course she's hot!" (Hmm... hot is a relative term). "We are heading out after this - yeah, we're at a bar right now," she says, twirling her hair as a mozzarella stick goes flying past her head.

Not by my kid.

Thank you very much.

Again, restaurant - not bar. Not when the majority of the clientèle still is a prime audience for the Sprout network.

"Oh - and just so you know," she added before she hangs up the phone, "I don't have to work until 11 tomorrow morning, so I can like, 'totally' hang out."

Hooker.

Anyway. I sit back and enjoy my dinner with my kids and just pray that my daughter never chooses to ho herself out at a family restaurant when all of a sudden I hear my son coughing.

John and I both turn to see Nico spitting up on his French Fry and get up to make sure he's ok. He's not. Next thing, we know, he hurls all over.

I mean, he does, but the thing is - it's baby puke. Like - he is not even 1 year old yet - and while it's not fun that it just happened - you know, it happens.

As John tries to pat and comfort our son and I try to clean up the mess and calm Shaila down, I look over at the table next to us. The girl who just offered sexual favors on her cell phone in the middle of a crowded family restaurant looks over at my baby boy and says, "Oh, how disgusting!"

Ok. I get it. I'm not asking you to eat it. Bitch.

Anyway, I guess her friend realized how it came off and asks (or maybe she actually was genuinely concerned - like most human beings would be), "Is he ok?"

"No. Thank you for very much for asking, but he was choking," still in disbelief that her friend continues to stare at my son like he is a leper and shake her little bleached blonde bimbo ass head.

We clean up the mess, get the check, tip our server and apologize for the trouble. The staff is super sweet as we prepare to go. Shaila looks over at the table next to us. I think she is somehow both drawn to and repelled by this young woman.

Kind of like how I am with Houswives of NJ.

"Come on honey, let's go," I prod her along, trying to move her out to the parking lot.

She won't budge.

She just wants to keep staring at this woman who was so stingy with her ketchup.

See? My daughter has been learning about sharing.

And then I do something that is not so nice. It was my opportunity to show my daughter how sweet and peaceful I could be, letting the anger roll off of me all Zen like.

But instead, I turned around, pick Shaila up and say, quite loudly,

"No, honey. We don't hang out near the trash while its waiting to get picked up."

Great parenting.

Someone's been watching too much Bravo.

Peace out, homeys.

XOXO,
Kiran