I’m Just Sayin: Boys Will Be Boys (Which Mainly Means Constantly Embarrassing Me)
Right about now, there are an insanely incalculable number of questions cavorting in my mind, and per usual beyond being just absolutely random, they are also formidably useless. But I can’t help it if I am a thinker. And not only do I think a lot but I also worry beaucoup about a lot of things of massive importance: When will gas prices reasonably drop? Is there ever going to be peace in the Middle East? Will Lindsay Lohan ever get sober? Is MTV ever going to play music videos again? Will “Footloose” (the remake) be as much of a success as the first one?
But, hands down, the most daunting question I struggle with, more often than not, is, while the unlikely does usually happen, why is it always happening to me?
Now it’s a known fact that I don’t have kids (yet), but, and this may come as shock to you, I do have boys – two of them! While, I can quite decide if they’re on the cusp of puberty or already going through it, one thing I know for sure is that they’re both spectacularly rebellious and remarkably mentally retarded. And please don’t you jump on your high horse and lecture me about my not politically correct use of the word “retard”. I don’t mean it in a derogatory way but rather in its very academic, medical sense. It’s been proven that the brain of teenagers doesn’t reach its full development until the age of twenty-five, so that technically means that anyone below a quarter of a century in age is mentally retarded – at least partially.
Much to my despair and regret, my boys are no exception. They continuously excel at displaying the most absurd of behaviors, which means they’re completely out of their minds – or else they just immensely enjoy embarrassing me. Of course I’m referring to my grandpa and little puppy Georgie. Those two are just trouble – individually, separately and collectively. I’m not gonna lie. Humanly impossible to parent them especially when they’re together. They’re partners in crime always up to no good, and evidently everything turns into double trouble!
So the other day, I was on baby-sitting duty and decided to take the boys out to lunch. We settled on our favorite Lebanese restaurant in Manhattan Beach because: one, the food is delicious; two, they have an outside patio where the likes of Georgie’s species are allowed; three, it’s the only cuisine containing vegetables that grandpa will actually eat without bitching about it; and four, Georgie loves kafta with hummus – grandpa’s leftovers which he with out fail, yet not so inconspicuously, sneaks under the table thinking I am absolutely blind (or stupid) and can’t see even though I am sitting right across the table inches away from him.
I could make a big stink about it, but I never say a word. They have me right where they want me and I am consciously letting those two have at it. After all, it’s not a big deal if they both think they’re totally getting away with this shit. And if anything, I’m actually very pleased to see that my Georgie has fully embraced his Lebanese cultural heritage. That, and also the fact that I don’t want to develop a reputation as the mucho unhip forty year-old constipated disciplinarian. It’d be devastatingly tragic for my once upon a time, not so long ago in the 80s, so fashionably cool and trendy ancient booty.
There we were savoring our decadently succulent entrees when not even two minutes after the plates had been dropped on the table, the waitress suddenly came back. As any other normal human being would surely deduct, I automatically assumed she reappeared to do the customary courteous round of “is everything to your liking” check. Not so much! Grandpa and I (and Georgie) were barely two bites into our meal when Dumb Dumb (that would be the nickname we endearingly gave our fabulously retarded waitress) asked:
“Will you have room for any dessert today? We have a homemade traditional chocolate Baklava and a rice pudding with rosewater that’s to die for.”
Needless to say, I shot her a murderously nasty look as in “what the fuck is wrong with you?” Seriously who in their right minds, enquires about dessert when the freaking entrees haven’t even been consumed yet?
I couldn’t help but wonder if she was purposefully stupid or just stupidly anxious to mentally compute how much tips she’d approximately be making off of our party.
Of course grandpa who always forgets to wear his hearing aids, missed the whole sales pitch on the alleged decadent desserts.
“What did she say?” grandpa enquired.
“She wanted to know if we would have room for dessert,” I replied loudly enunciating every word for him to hear but also for dramatic effect seeing that Dumb Dumb was still within audio vicinity.
“Is she serious? What a moron!” grandpa belched out obviously not aware of the volume level at which he was speaking – but that’s what happens when you’re hearing impaired, you think everyone else is deaf too.
It’s hard to gage whether Dumb Dumb heard him or not, but I’ll go with she didn’t.
How else would you explain the fact that five minutes later, she paid us another visit and again attempted to have us revisit her original idea?
“So how about now? Do you think you will save enough space for desserts, coffee or cappuccino?” she said with as much gusto as the first time.
Here’s a wild idea: how about you let us finish our goddamn entrees in peace and then you try to pique our interest in a freaking dessert? Any of this makes sense to you?
Of course I didn’t say that out loud. Instead, forcing my face into a neutral expression, I simply told her that we hadn’t made up our minds yet but that we would for sure let her know as soon as we did. Frankly it was the best and most diplomatic way I could quickly come up with to subtly let know we wanted no part in her demented psychosis. Clearly she was no graduate from the “Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne” and was absolutely sans knowledge of proper restaurant etiquette, but, and perhaps even worse, had obviously no kills in the common sense department.
A few minutes later, I was done with my meal and accordingly rested my fork and knife on the plate as a formal sign of capitulation. Of course, grandpa was still working on his plate since he was also secretly feeding his buddy Georgie whenever he thought my eyes were conveniently wandering out of his visual periphery.
And guess who graced us with her majestic presence again? Dumb Dumb, that’s who!
“Let me clear this for you,” she said disposing of my plate, “should I get a dessert going for you?” she immediately dropped in that same breath.
I really wanted to ask her what was the deal with her dessert obsession – I mean did she bake them? Does she get a commission per dessert sold? What the fuck?
“No thank you, I’m quite full,” I politely said.
“Oh that’s too bad, there’re really good,” she replied trying to make me feel guilty. “Now will your dad be having a dessert?” she persisted.
While her calling grandpa “dad” was certainly nothing I found objectionable, I did find her pushiness highly annoying.
Let’s review a few things here, which I shall call the 101 basic ethical rules of proper waitressing:
1) You don’t remove plates until everybody is done eating.
2) You don’t ask about dessert until everyone is done with their entrees
3) And you don’t EVER present the bill until you’re asked to do so
Of course she royally failed to comply with all of the above and more.
So as soon as I informed her we would not be indulging in any of her extraordinary specialty desserts, and mind you, while grandpa was still digging into his Kafta dish, Dumb Dumb, who took the news rather traumatically, dropped the bill on the table.
Not to make everything about me, but I did take that rather attitudinal move very personally – you know as in her oh-so not subtly saying “hurry and get the fuck out of here.”
She could have just shown me her middle finger and call it a day! Frankly, it would have been more honorable of her and I would have had much more respect for her, not to mention she would have immediately regained the points she instantly lost on her tips when she first harassed us with her Baklava, chocolate coulis, pistachio cluster or whatever those killer pastries were made of.
So far, admittedly, my boys remained impressively well behaved while this whole nonsensical charade was happening. And as much as this would certainly qualify as an out of this world episode, here’s where things really took a surreal turn. To think that things couldn’t possibly get worse is almost laughable considering I am a weirdness magnet. Remember the part where I said the unlikely usually happens to me? Well, I wasn’t kidding.
Grandpa had another manly man bodily malfunction and of course it happened in the glamorous presence of none other than moi. I swear I am cursed or perhaps grandpa just finds it highly amusing to perpetually embarrass me.
Once Dumb Dumb had wrapped her imbecilic show and that it finally registered with her pea-sized brain that she needed to majorly back off with the borderline cultish nature of her attack of the sweets technique, grandpa took over for her.
Remember that life-scaring incident having to do with a certain Air France VIP lounge at LAX, I told you about not too long ago? Well history is surely repeating itself. And for those of you who deprived yourselves the immeasurable pleasure of reading my brilliant column, let’s just say grandpa delivered an exceptional display of petulant childishness. In a nutshell, he insensibly exercised his natural primitive rights to let his derriere organically do the talking. That’s right! Once again, grandpa let a big, monumentally loud, not to mention, interminably looooong fart go in public, right in the middle of the restaurant, of course at that exact fatal moment when the entire place temporarily went dead silent (as in you could hear a pin drop). I knew everybody was shooting me a look, but I bravely chose to keep my head down praying somehow I could magically disappear while avoiding at all cost to make eye contact with anyone. I didn’t even dare looking in front of me at the guilty party who caused my utter petrification. Indeed, it was nothing short of humiliating.
After what seemed like a century, I ingeniously decided to use my poor innocent puppy as the Ginny-pig and tried to pass off grandpa’s explosive anal fireworks as Georgie’s. So I gently grabbed my little boy by the collar and proceeded to lecture him out loud so everyone could hear me and mentally applaud my good parenting skills. Poor thing was staring at me probably thinking I was on crack. How do you tell a dog it’s not for real and that you’re just pretending for appearance’s sake?
Speaking about Georgie, the drama that of course enfolded with him was a whole other animal. Right when we settled the check and were about to finally split, some wannabe Lassie showed up out of nowhere and planted his very old and clearly medicated ass in front of my son. They passively stared at each other for a solid ten seconds before Georgie then suddenly decided to cause a ruckus and bite wannabe-Lassie’s nose.
To this day I’m not certain what muted words were exchanged between those two, but if you ask me, wannabe-Lassie started it. Admittedly, I was silently approving of my dog’s behavior and was absolutely co-signing his natural instinct to retaliate in the face of provocation; yet I had to pretend I was just as revolted at his (seemingly) irrational brutal attitude as wannabe-Lassie’s owner was. And of course, said owner was an old fart much displaying the same exceptional mental slowness and retardation aptitudes as her dog. And call me an asshole if you want, I don’t care. The lady was a royal bitch!
“Just so you know your dog made my dog bleed,” she said resentfully before walking away without giving me a chance to formally present my most sincere apologies.
Then barely one minute later, she popped out again in front of my face.
“Does your dog have rabies? Is he vaccinated?” she asked me in a rather aggressive tone. Seriously, I thought I was being interrogated by the Gestapo.
She split again and seconds later returned again to the scene of the crime to harass me with the same line of questions but in a different order.
“Is your dog vaccinated? Does he have rabies?”
And again she immediately disappeared without even waiting for my answers.
She took three steps backwards, then four steps forward and again accosted me.
Here’s the pulse pounding moment of this story – guess what she asked?
Drum rolls please …… ta da: “Is your dog vaccinated? Does he have rabies?”
That was my final cue to grab my boys and get the fuck out of there pronto.
Was this place for real? What was up with these idiots and their uncanny obnoxious habit of repeating the same shit over and over and over again? These were not my kind of people -that much was beyond crystal clear.
It is safe to say that our Lebanese lunching experience felt more like a jihad attack than the anticipated explosively flavorful and divine treat for our palates.
Now, not only do I have a dog named George Michael who’s very much wanted (and not just because he is a superstar), but I also have a grandpa who at nearly 90 years of age, somehow fabulously managed to get us all eighty-sixed from our favorite Lebanese establishment.
As the saying goes: boys will be boys.
It’s a piece of cake!
…I’m just sayin’!
No wait a second … that’s Dumb Dumb’s line!
Right about now, there are an insanely incalculable number of questions cavorting in my mind, and per usual beyond being just absolutely random, they are also formidably useless. But I can’t help it if I am a thinker. And not only do I think a lot but I also worry beaucoup about a lot of things of massive importance: When will gas prices reasonably drop? Is there ever going to be peace in the Middle East? Will Lindsay Lohan ever get sober? Is MTV ever going to play music videos again? Will “Footloose” (the remake) be as much of a success as the first one?
But, hands down, the most daunting question I struggle with, more often than not, is, while the unlikely does usually happen, why is it always happening to me?
Now it’s a known fact that I don’t have kids (yet), but, and this may come as shock to you, I do have boys – two of them! While, I can quite decide if they’re on the cusp of puberty or already going through it, one thing I know for sure is that they’re both spectacularly rebellious and remarkably mentally retarded. And please don’t you jump on your high horse and lecture me about my not politically correct use of the word “retard”. I don’t mean it in a derogatory way but rather in its very academic, medical sense. It’s been proven that the brain of teenagers doesn’t reach its full development until the age of twenty-five, so that technically means that anyone below a quarter of a century in age is mentally retarded – at least partially.
Much to my despair and regret, my boys are no exception. They continuously excel at displaying the most absurd of behaviors, which means they’re completely out of their minds – or else they just immensely enjoy embarrassing me. Of course I’m referring to my grandpa and little puppy Georgie. Those two are just trouble – individually, separately and collectively. I’m not gonna lie. Humanly impossible to parent them especially when they’re together. They’re partners in crime always up to no good, and evidently everything turns into double trouble!
So the other day, I was on baby-sitting duty and decided to take the boys out to lunch. We settled on our favorite Lebanese restaurant in Manhattan Beach because: one, the food is delicious; two, they have an outside patio where the likes of Georgie’s species are allowed; three, it’s the only cuisine containing vegetables that grandpa will actually eat without bitching about it; and four, Georgie loves kafta with hummus – grandpa’s leftovers which he with out fail, yet not so inconspicuously, sneaks under the table thinking I am absolutely blind (or stupid) and can’t see even though I am sitting right across the table inches away from him.
I could make a big stink about it, but I never say a word. They have me right where they want me and I am consciously letting those two have at it. After all, it’s not a big deal if they both think they’re totally getting away with this shit. And if anything, I’m actually very pleased to see that my Georgie has fully embraced his Lebanese cultural heritage. That, and also the fact that I don’t want to develop a reputation as the mucho unhip forty year-old constipated disciplinarian. It’d be devastatingly tragic for my once upon a time, not so long ago in the 80s, so fashionably cool and trendy ancient booty.
There we were savoring our decadently succulent entrees when not even two minutes after the plates had been dropped on the table, the waitress suddenly came back. As any other normal human being would surely deduct, I automatically assumed she reappeared to do the customary courteous round of “is everything to your liking” check. Not so much! Grandpa and I (and Georgie) were barely two bites into our meal when Dumb Dumb (that would be the nickname we endearingly gave our fabulously retarded waitress) asked:
“Will you have room for any dessert today? We have a homemade traditional chocolate Baklava and a rice pudding with rosewater that’s to die for.”
Needless to say, I shot her a murderously nasty look as in “what the fuck is wrong with you?” Seriously who in their right minds, enquires about dessert when the freaking entrees haven’t even been consumed yet?
I couldn’t help but wonder if she was purposefully stupid or just stupidly anxious to mentally compute how much tips she’d approximately be making off of our party.
Of course grandpa who always forgets to wear his hearing aids, missed the whole sales pitch on the alleged decadent desserts.
“What did she say?” grandpa enquired.
“She wanted to know if we would have room for dessert,” I replied loudly enunciating every word for him to hear but also for dramatic effect seeing that Dumb Dumb was still within audio vicinity.
“Is she serious? What a moron!” grandpa belched out obviously not aware of the volume level at which he was speaking – but that’s what happens when you’re hearing impaired, you think everyone else is deaf too.
It’s hard to gage whether Dumb Dumb heard him or not, but I’ll go with she didn’t.
How else would you explain the fact that five minutes later, she paid us another visit and again attempted to have us revisit her original idea?
“So how about now? Do you think you will save enough space for desserts, coffee or cappuccino?” she said with as much gusto as the first time.
Here’s a wild idea: how about you let us finish our goddamn entrees in peace and then you try to pique our interest in a freaking dessert? Any of this makes sense to you?
Of course I didn’t say that out loud. Instead, forcing my face into a neutral expression, I simply told her that we hadn’t made up our minds yet but that we would for sure let her know as soon as we did. Frankly it was the best and most diplomatic way I could quickly come up with to subtly let know we wanted no part in her demented psychosis. Clearly she was no graduate from the “Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne” and was absolutely sans knowledge of proper restaurant etiquette, but, and perhaps even worse, had obviously no kills in the common sense department.
A few minutes later, I was done with my meal and accordingly rested my fork and knife on the plate as a formal sign of capitulation. Of course, grandpa was still working on his plate since he was also secretly feeding his buddy Georgie whenever he thought my eyes were conveniently wandering out of his visual periphery.
And guess who graced us with her majestic presence again? Dumb Dumb, that’s who!
“Let me clear this for you,” she said disposing of my plate, “should I get a dessert going for you?” she immediately dropped in that same breath.
I really wanted to ask her what was the deal with her dessert obsession – I mean did she bake them? Does she get a commission per dessert sold? What the fuck?
“No thank you, I’m quite full,” I politely said.
“Oh that’s too bad, there’re really good,” she replied trying to make me feel guilty. “Now will your dad be having a dessert?” she persisted.
While her calling grandpa “dad” was certainly nothing I found objectionable, I did find her pushiness highly annoying.
Let’s review a few things here, which I shall call the 101 basic ethical rules of proper waitressing:
1) You don’t remove plates until everybody is done eating.
2) You don’t ask about dessert until everyone is done with their entrees
3) And you don’t EVER present the bill until you’re asked to do so
Of course she royally failed to comply with all of the above and more.
So as soon as I informed her we would not be indulging in any of her extraordinary specialty desserts, and mind you, while grandpa was still digging into his Kafta dish, Dumb Dumb, who took the news rather traumatically, dropped the bill on the table.
Not to make everything about me, but I did take that rather attitudinal move very personally – you know as in her oh-so not subtly saying “hurry and get the fuck out of here.”
She could have just shown me her middle finger and call it a day! Frankly, it would have been more honorable of her and I would have had much more respect for her, not to mention she would have immediately regained the points she instantly lost on her tips when she first harassed us with her Baklava, chocolate coulis, pistachio cluster or whatever those killer pastries were made of.
So far, admittedly, my boys remained impressively well behaved while this whole nonsensical charade was happening. And as much as this would certainly qualify as an out of this world episode, here’s where things really took a surreal turn. To think that things couldn’t possibly get worse is almost laughable considering I am a weirdness magnet. Remember the part where I said the unlikely usually happens to me? Well, I wasn’t kidding.
Grandpa had another manly man bodily malfunction and of course it happened in the glamorous presence of none other than moi. I swear I am cursed or perhaps grandpa just finds it highly amusing to perpetually embarrass me.
Once Dumb Dumb had wrapped her imbecilic show and that it finally registered with her pea-sized brain that she needed to majorly back off with the borderline cultish nature of her attack of the sweets technique, grandpa took over for her.
Remember that life-scaring incident having to do with a certain Air France VIP lounge at LAX, I told you about not too long ago? Well history is surely repeating itself. And for those of you who deprived yourselves the immeasurable pleasure of reading my brilliant column, let’s just say grandpa delivered an exceptional display of petulant childishness. In a nutshell, he insensibly exercised his natural primitive rights to let his derriere organically do the talking. That’s right! Once again, grandpa let a big, monumentally loud, not to mention, interminably looooong fart go in public, right in the middle of the restaurant, of course at that exact fatal moment when the entire place temporarily went dead silent (as in you could hear a pin drop). I knew everybody was shooting me a look, but I bravely chose to keep my head down praying somehow I could magically disappear while avoiding at all cost to make eye contact with anyone. I didn’t even dare looking in front of me at the guilty party who caused my utter petrification. Indeed, it was nothing short of humiliating.
After what seemed like a century, I ingeniously decided to use my poor innocent puppy as the Ginny-pig and tried to pass off grandpa’s explosive anal fireworks as Georgie’s. So I gently grabbed my little boy by the collar and proceeded to lecture him out loud so everyone could hear me and mentally applaud my good parenting skills. Poor thing was staring at me probably thinking I was on crack. How do you tell a dog it’s not for real and that you’re just pretending for appearance’s sake?
Speaking about Georgie, the drama that of course enfolded with him was a whole other animal. Right when we settled the check and were about to finally split, some wannabe Lassie showed up out of nowhere and planted his very old and clearly medicated ass in front of my son. They passively stared at each other for a solid ten seconds before Georgie then suddenly decided to cause a ruckus and bite wannabe-Lassie’s nose.
To this day I’m not certain what muted words were exchanged between those two, but if you ask me, wannabe-Lassie started it. Admittedly, I was silently approving of my dog’s behavior and was absolutely co-signing his natural instinct to retaliate in the face of provocation; yet I had to pretend I was just as revolted at his (seemingly) irrational brutal attitude as wannabe-Lassie’s owner was. And of course, said owner was an old fart much displaying the same exceptional mental slowness and retardation aptitudes as her dog. And call me an asshole if you want, I don’t care. The lady was a royal bitch!
“Just so you know your dog made my dog bleed,” she said resentfully before walking away without giving me a chance to formally present my most sincere apologies.
Then barely one minute later, she popped out again in front of my face.
“Does your dog have rabies? Is he vaccinated?” she asked me in a rather aggressive tone. Seriously, I thought I was being interrogated by the Gestapo.
She split again and seconds later returned again to the scene of the crime to harass me with the same line of questions but in a different order.
“Is your dog vaccinated? Does he have rabies?”
And again she immediately disappeared without even waiting for my answers.
She took three steps backwards, then four steps forward and again accosted me.
Here’s the pulse pounding moment of this story – guess what she asked?
Drum rolls please …… ta da: “Is your dog vaccinated? Does he have rabies?”
That was my final cue to grab my boys and get the fuck out of there pronto.
Was this place for real? What was up with these idiots and their uncanny obnoxious habit of repeating the same shit over and over and over again? These were not my kind of people -that much was beyond crystal clear.
It is safe to say that our Lebanese lunching experience felt more like a jihad attack than the anticipated explosively flavorful and divine treat for our palates.
Now, not only do I have a dog named George Michael who’s very much wanted (and not just because he is a superstar), but I also have a grandpa who at nearly 90 years of age, somehow fabulously managed to get us all eighty-sixed from our favorite Lebanese establishment.
As the saying goes: boys will be boys.
It’s a piece of cake!
…I’m just sayin’!
No wait a second … that’s Dumb Dumb’s line!
