Megan Stielstra's Blog

I was early meeting Kat for brunch, so I got out the journal and did some writing, and, as usual for Sunday brunch in Chicago, there were little kids running all over the place while their parents sat and talked (and ignored them totally and, while that doesn’t bother me so much as a patron I did spend the better part of a decade working Sunday brunch so, people; please, please, PLEASE do not let your children run all over the restaurant while you drink lattes and talk to your adult friends, I mean, come ON! You wouldn’t let your child walk unsupervised across a field of landmines, right? And that server is carrying four plates of very hot things—three stacked precariously on her left arm and the fourth in her right hand—and what happens when little Johnny bangs into her knees is she loses her grip on those plates and fast forward to your impending lawsuit against her bosses (and her subsequent unemployment) not to MENTION the lifelong guilt due to Johnny’s 2nd degree burns from Hollandaise sauce and ALSO possible brain damage due to concussion—brunch plates are VERY heavy, people—and the kicker is: none of this is her fault! or Johnny’s fault—he’s FIVE for godssakes, he can’t be held responsible for his actions!—but you! YOU are the one to blame! For taking him to brunch and ignoring him and your friend Sandy’s pigtailed triplets who are looped on sugar from chocolate chip pancakes and running all round the restaurant like drunken sorority girls!) and after a while the mother looks up and sees her kids playing tag around the poor waitress trying to deliver steaming hot coffee and what she does is look at her husband and say (very loudly—I am across the room and I can hear her), “JOHN!” to her husband, a big hairy guy who just wants to be sleeping in on Sunday morning, he works all f’ing week, Lord Almighty can’t he get a BREAK? “Don’t let them run around like that! Some people are trying to—” and I expect her to say DO THEIR JOB and then get the kids out of this girl’s way, shit, I want to get the kids out of this poor girl’s way! (but then, inevitably, I think about that day when I do have children and if any stranger either A. touches them or B. tells me how to handle them there’s going to be hell to pay, I’ll tell you what [that said, I won’t be taking my kids out to Sunday brunch without some serious crayons or a portable DVD player, thank you very much, and also I TIP VERY WELL], so I stay in my seat and drink my coffee) but this mom doesn’t notice the waitress at all, only the other patrons who are looking daggers at her. Like ME, and she looks straight at me sitting there writing in my journal and says, “Some people are trying to have THOUGHTS!!”