The Cart in the Restaurant

We were out to dinner last night at Guapo’s in Northwest Washington. It’s one of our favorite Mexican places. The food is good, the atmosphere is nice, the staff usually pretty good and always friendly. We get a table in a lovely corner, not too far from one of those large tables with about three couples and their three or four darling little children who ought to be off in bed somewhere not – at 8:00 on a Saturday night – out at some damn restaurant.

We hesitated a bit and then decided not to ask for a different table, because it seemed they were finishing up, judging by the empty plates, scattering of sippy cups and other assorted detritus left on a table when a family with children dines out. And sure enough, it wasn’t long before they left. And so did the family of four – mom, dad, darling daughter and smashing son. We settled in for a nice, quiet Mexican dinner – our night out for the weekend. Our reward to making it through Another Week in Business.

Well almost no sooner had we received our drink order – which we sipped while we watch the busboy have to take a freaking BROOM to the floor underneath where the group table and the Movable Kindergarten had been – than the Woman With the Baby Carriage comes through the dining room. This wasn’t a little stroller, either. This was one of those fucking Winnebagoes that seems necessary these days for carting the Little Ones around. Only marginally smaller than a Mini-Cooper and just about as easy to maneuver in a crowded restaurant.

Probably something not unlike the one that illustrates this post – a $400 job I found on Froogle. It was BIG, Ok? You get the idea. Too big for a crowded Mexican Restaurant on a Saturday night in Washington, D.C.

But undeterred, she steered around, bumped and banged into every available table and finally settled in next to us. Where she proceeded to re-arrange the chairs at the neighboring tables to make room for the Winnebagoe and her infant. Said infant positioned, of course, so both she and Dad – when he arrived with cell phone in hand could gaze fondly throughout dinner at the newest gift to the entire fucking world.

Let’s review real quickly. This woman brought a God-damned baby carriage into the dining room of a restaurant. Why not just bring in your fucking bicycle?

He, of course, set the damn cell phone open on the table so he could fiddle with it and look at it as well as the baby, and it wasn’t long before they ordered a pitcher of hot water so they could heat a bottle.

And that was when I ordered another beer.