Control Your Children - DA** IT!!!

Pardon me for a moment while I rant and rave. If I had overheard any of the names of the adults involved, I would gladly print them in full. Unfortunately, that information did not come to light.

I like to eat out. I enjoy taking my children out to restaurants and spending time with the family while somebody else does the cooking and cleaning.

I expect a certain level of behavior from my children. I do not allow them to sprawl across their seats. I do not allow them to throw food or scream or pitch fits, even when it takes FOREVER for our food to arrive.

I would like to think that other parents are capable of maintaining some level of control over their children when they bring said children into public. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

So.... here is what I have determined.

If you allow your TEN YEAR OLD CHILD to sprawl across the booth that is between my table and yours, putting his feet in the vicinity of my table where my FIVE YEAR OLD CHILD is sitting quietly trying to eat her food, then I will not react if my darling angel decides to poke her fork into YOUR child's leg because he is invading her space with his DIRTY, NASTY feet.

In fact, I may even encourage my child to poke her fork into your child's leg, because HIS FEET DON'T BELONG ANYWHERE NEAR MY CHILD, AND CERTAINLY NOT NEAR MY TABLE.

Now, I will grant you that IHOP is a fairly relaxed atmosphere where certain protocols can be overlooked. This still does not give you and/or your child to behave so blatantly obnoxious as to be spreading clear across the booth where his feet are over on my side of the world. Seriously, have you no shame. And when you did finally notice that your child was sprawled across the booth, could you have at least acknowledged his rudeness and apologized to us for invading our space?

Mind you, I did think strongly about encouraging my child to poke those feet that were encroaching on our space more and more by the second. I only decided not to do this because I didn't have a clean fork on the table that could replace the one she was using. I really did not relish the thought of having to wait for a new fork to find its way to my table. This is the only thing that saved your child's legs today.

Sitting her now, though, I wish it had occurred to me to have her "spill" a bit of her ooey gooey syrup onto the booth beside her. No matter that his legs were right there in the way and would certainly fall prey to the sticky goo. Lucky for you --- I didn't think of that at the restaurant because believe me when I say ... I WOULD DEFINITELY HAVE SUGGESTED THAT.... or perhaps I would have accidentally knocked her tea over onto his legs. If only the thought had come to me before... SIGH!!!