Why I should be raising your children

Last week we went out to the Austin Grill in Silver Spring with my mother to have a nice dinner before she returned to CA. The food was excellent, the service, not amazing, but good enough. And the music was, well, that's where it gets more complicated. Initially we heard a young woman singing, quite beautifully, while we waited for our dessert. However, apparently it's an open mic at the Austin Grill, and some children decided to take a turn at wowing the crowd.

They were awful, not quite ear splittingly so, but they were pushing it. And one of them was playing a guitar, not well, and any sort of pleasant ambiance had been removed by their caterwauling and generally awfulness.

M: These kids are ruining my dinner. What the hell happened to that one girl?
Mom: They aren't very good are they?
S: They are kids.
M: Yeah, kids who suck at singing.
S: They have to learn to be good somewhere.
M: Do you know where they should be practicing? In a room, alone, with the door closed.

For the next ten minutes I prevailed upon S and mom to join me in my crusade against permissive parents. I mean, the awful part of this ordeal is that the parents obviously green lighted this assault upon our ears. They were, no doubt, beaming with all sorts of pride over the racket that their children had managed to create. But you know what? they aren't good. Your permissive parenting is interfering with my enjoyment of local cinnamon ice cream. I haven't had that ice cream in years, and now this indignity while I try and partake of it's effervescent beauty?

I've worked a few years at pre-schools and let me tell you, kids need discouragement. In fact, once you start school, you get discouraged all the time. They give you grades for stuff. Your employer isn't happy that you gave it your best effort, they want you to do the damn thing correctly. So fine, let your kids hammer away on the guitar and warble the night away, at home!

Short story rather long, it turns out that after I'd been defaming these miserable permissive parents we discovered that they were sitting right next to us. Could they hear us? I don't know. But here's how I know that my complaining hadn't been a bad thing. I didn't give a damn if they had heard me or not. And yes, I'll now be writing my local government to complain about squirrel populations and pot holes, I am officially a sixty three year old man.

The real point is that I am a modern day Mother Theresa. If you don't want your children, send them to me. I will take care of them. And Lord knows they won't be learning to play the xylophone while you're trying to enjoy the company of some attractive personage. Nor will they tie your shoelaces together underneath the table just to annoy you. No, they will be the best sort of kids. Milford Men. Milford Academy, where children are neither seen nor heard.

Fiction (Cont)

I have long had an unhealthy obsession with shoes likely related to the event. These here are high grade Columbia boots: waterproof, abrasion resistant fabric, soles lined with Vigram trek rubber, an aggressive lug pattern designed to maintain maximal connection between foot and ground even on the harshest of trails. These shoes are the equivalent of a Vermeer amongst the other common painters of Dutch baroque.

The problem was, after the surgery, I swear that her left eye constantly prosecuted me. I could not see that alluring asymmetry without feeling the ground giving way beneath my shoe. Imagine for me, living in the presence of someone who is constantly weighing and judging your every movement. Someone who sees that almost every small gesture that you make is intended to create a positive reflection of you. That every smile at work, every opened door, every turn of phrase or slight shift in your demeanor is designed to create some sort of archetypal version of yourself that bears only a vague resemblance to the person that you really are.

Naturally this change in her disposition towards me eventually caused a problem. I could not look at that side of her face without being overwhelmed by guilt. As such, I was forced to create elaborate distractions when we were seated in booths, to ensure that I was on her right side, I’d fumble with my keys, or pretend to have lost my wallet. I’d sit on the same side as her so as to avoid looking at that near perfect reconstruction head on. Which, when faced with this prospect, her face head on, I developed the habit of cocking my head slightly to the left and rubbing the palm of my right hand across my right eye and eventually insisting on wearing an eye patch in public places due to a case of fabricated pink eye. The whole avoidance of her face becoming an elaborate scenario more important to me than anything I can remember. The natural outcome of this was that a discrepancy occurred between the reality of the situation and Katie’s perception of that situation. She assumed that I shaded my face, or wore an eye patch because the plastic surgery had been unsuccessful and that I now regarded her as some flawed thing. And though I assured her that her fears were misguided, she could not be dissuaded. I should say that I think the eye patch did not aid in making me a figure in whom one puts trust. The doctors had really done amazing things. She could have modeled afterward.