They arrive pushing a double-wide. The kind that lets you know that not only did they make one bad decision, but two, in succession. And those bleary-eyed bad decisions are being pushed along in front of them to precede what used to be their personalities.
They stand there with double wide-eyed stares as they try to brazenly push their children’s chosen chariot through the ADA compliant entrance to our michelin-recommended establishment. You watch, thinking, side-wind that shit. Come on, they’re strapped in and also they don’t care and are in desperate need of some excitement or danger. Just tip it a bit, you know how to get it in there.
They won’t. They wait. They wait for the manager to arrive and indistinctly bow to them as he dissassembles the italian-crafted entrance to the restaurant so that the doors now resemble a gaping, open wound. And into it they embark.
You think maybe you should offer to wash their feet with your long hair, oh ye fair messiahs of Brooklyn. These are the people that believe service and servitude are one and the same. You bore all of the flames and heat behind your laser-strong stare into their backs as they navigate their pedestrian dodge caravan through the restaurant. Everyone is uncomfortable, not exactly because of this new presence but because this is brunch. This is brunch, an invitation for everyone to leave their homes and decide that they are uncomfortable with everything. Nothing is ok. Nothing is acceptable. This is brunch.
And you are fucking serving it.
What occurs over the next 2 hours is a painful dance of desperate menu inquiring, indistinct and hardly convictional decision-making, coffee cake throwing, menu-eating, crying, drooling, begging and also the children misbehaving that amounts to a $72 tab for 4 adults and 5 children.
As you hear the DING! of the food bell you instinctively rush to the pass like a gazelle through the sahara, finally finding an oasis. A gazelle in overalls. A hungover gazelle in overalls and converse sneakers. Ok fuck it, just a hungover bartender wearing the clothes she found on the floor this morning but managing to keep it together, somehow, overall.
As you reach for their stuffed french toast, wiping the sacred perimeter of the plate clean of rogue powdered sugar, that small sign of a clean plate perimeter that you know to everyone silently communicates “Yes, it’s safe to eat here. You are safe and we care about you.” You turn to deliver said dessert to the table. As you do, one of the double-wide babies starts to howl as it unwillingly dances in its mother’s arms. You lay the plate among the crumbs and crayons and other salient sins and you hear her cooing at the baby, “Shhh please honey, shhh. Please don’t cry. Mommy needs this. Shhh, please. Mommy needs this.”
Mommy needed to do a whole lot more living before she had you, baby. Babies. Mommy needed to be so much more than a vehicle for new life before she’d lived hers herself. Mommy needed to strip down and dance naked in the moonlight. Mommy needed to fuck some strangers. Mommy needed to be broken and reborn stronger. Mommy needed to get lost and be found. Mommy needed to explore new shores alone. Mommy needed so much more than stuffed french toast.
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