Kelley and I had lunch in an old haunt yesterday. Julia’s is a Wallingford (a Seattle neighbourhood) institution. It’s a Very Worthy place, where all the rice is brown, all the chairs are rickety, and most of the shoes are made of natural fibres which have never been near any kind of animal. Every few years they go through a Menu Change, and perform the kind of interesting internal remake that brings in different customers to order different food items but which doesn’t involve actual change. It’s an alchemical mystery. (Warning: never go to Julia’s if you’re in a hurry. There are only two servers, one butch and one femme, for a place with at least 50 covers. This is the place where that famous saying was born: Seattle–if you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes; if you don’t like the service, wait ten minutes…)
But K and I have been going there since we bought a house in Wallingford in 1995 and about once a month we pootle over and drink tea, eat something egregiously healthy, and spend two unhurried hours talking about something utterly pointless but amusing. (Yesterday it was celebrities: how long does it take to change one’s image these days?) This time, though, the New Set of customers included a group of 30-something parents with 3 utterly vile children. The parents were all flirting with each other and egging said children on to truly astonishing heights of volume and physical foolishness. One 3-year old in particular had a shriek like a cheese wire. Then two of the brood (one, thankfully, wasn’t yet at the independent mobility stage) started chasing each other around the table.
Our overworked server had just given us our food (I had ginger cashew stir fry; very nice, too) when one of the 30-somethings snapped her fingers. Our server, a sturdy woman of a certain age, turned anxiously, hurriedly…and trundled right over the 3-year-old. Crush, grind, thump. Shocked silence. Followed by the exit of the entire party. No one actually cheered but we all wanted to. I suspect I wasn’t the only person to give the server an extra large tip. The only thing that would have been more satisfying was if she’d managed to fling a tureen of boiling soup over the wholly tedious parents. Next time…
Nicola Griffith 
Oh man I'm such a breeder…but don't plan on being terrible. A Brooklyn blogger with a purposefully offensive name started a movement to hem & haw out a compact between 'rents & non's.
http://www.blognigger.com/2008/07/declaration-of-co-dependence.html
Mordicai, can I have one of your puppies?
Pootle? Is that a derivative of tootle?
I hope the server wasn't hurt in the crush.
Chadao I keep saying I need to get off my butt & start donating sperm; like winning the genetic lottery, that!
mordicai, my mother owned and ran several nursery schools. I worked in them during holidays and after school from the age of nine. I know how difficult kids can be–and how amazing. I know a good-but-tired parent from a self-involved git. The Park Slope people sound like the former. The idiots in Julia's the latter. We do need to learn to live with each other, yes. The thing is, I think I already know how. I just want the rest of the world to catch up…
jennifer, no one was hurt. The kid was shocked, the parents put out, the server irritated and a bit worried–but no physical injuries. (Oh, where's the boiling soup when you need it!)
In JP (Boston's trendiest lesbian mecca – sigh…) we have obnoxious yuppies with obnoxious battle strollers. Who needs a stroller that looks like it does night duty as a tank?