It was not a special occasion, but it was a lack of pasta that drove my decision to eat out.
The 50-pound boy, accompanied by his mom, was off for two-and-a-half hours of running in full gear into football tackling dummies, and their dad was working late that night. (He was probably doing pretty much the same thing . . . just with real people. I guess that’s why they call it work?)
That left me with the 5-year-old and 3-year-old girls and Chipper, the 80-pound chocolate lab puppy. (They said they named him Chipper because he looked like a chocolate chip cookie, but I think they had never seen him eat four popsicle sticks and five pencils in four minutes . . . he’s really like a wood chipper! Either way, the name works.)
Obviously, Chip was not going to the restaurant with us because he had not fully recovered from living through his first earthquake. He began sensing the “big one” the night before when he had severe lower-GI distress from nerves. (OK, maybe it was from eating the garbage, but let’s just say it was his amazing doggie senses that caused his family to reach for the phone to call out the Hazmat team when he began having his gas attack!)
The girls and I collectively decided to go to Rizzo’s on a date. So, they ran up to their room, dove into their closest and began trying on outfits. What they didn’t do was look at any of the clothing sizes. The 3-year-old put on three skirts that immediately fell off her waist, and the 5-year-old ended up in a pair of tights that we discovered later had the crotch somewhere down around her knees. . size two tights on a size five body.
By the time they called me into the mix there was an entire wardrobe strewn around the room. Blouses were hanging from the dresser drawers, underwear was on the floor, tops and bottoms pulled from hangers were everywhere, and neither girl had decided on an outfit.
The 3-year-old wears only dresses, and refuses to slum it in slacks, jeans or shorts. That dedication to high fashion severely limits the look-a-like goal that they had set for themselves. After fighting to get the tights onto the little one, we turned our attention to the dress situation, and after several tries, ended up with matching dresses, white tights and their new “Mary Jane” dress black school shoes. They looked like models pulled directly out of the pages of Glamour magazine for kids.
On the way to the restaurant, the 5-year-old kept saying from the back seat, “I feel like I’m in New York City. We’re all dressed up and going out for dinner.” As I looked over at the Sheetz on Main Street, it made me fully appreciate the magnificent imagination that a 5-year-old can bring to the party.
We arrived at the restaurant, were escorted to a table in the middle of the dining room and began to discuss food options. Obviously, a central table placement does not allow for much kid freedom and creates somewhat of a pressure situation, but, except for a few flying napkins, some broken and thrown crayons, a dive across the table for extra butter and a few other slips, all went well.
After a Shirley Temple and an orange juice, a shaker full of parmesan cheese, a bowl of black olives (special order), three slices of bread (They licked the butter off . . .), a bite of snake lips (steak tips) and three strands of spaghetti, they were ready to hit the road. Off we went to Starbucks for hot chocolate, Dunkin Donuts for munchkins and Gamestop for another Mario game. It was a perfect date that ended up in a line at the porta johns near their brother’s practice field. Only in New York!
(Nick Jacobs, Windber, international director for SunStone Consulting, LLC is the author of the blog Healinghospitals.com.)
A great night out
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