I Must Be Doing Something Right

Wednesday night, I couldn't muster up the effort to make dinner. It was getting late. I was bummed because my husband, Randy, got called in to meet a customer at his part time job. As if 2 nights this week weren't enough to miss him, now we we were on our third in a row.

So, my two boys and I headed out the door and drove up the highway and into the "country" to this nice diner nearby Randy's job. We popped in, said "hi", found out his customer hadn't come in yet, and proceeded on to dinner at the diner.

The Rayanne diner is seperated into two rooms. One has a counter and booths, the other small tables of 4 all lined up in rows. This is not the place to go if you want an intimate dinner. We were seated right in the middle of a very crowded dining room full of seniors, families, and assorted "regular looking" folk.

Now it's always an adventure taking my sons out. They're not exactly the quietest kids. You think it's something taking toddlers out to a restaurant? The toddlers would be staring at my kids, maybe wishing they'd sit still, eat their dinner, and lower their voices.

Picture my two sons. "Big Red", as he's been dubbed in his crowd is 15, as tall as me and still growing, has a shock of long, curly red hair, and a comical demeanor. My little guy, AJ, who's 11, tries to keep up with his brother. He can upstage him sometimes, but usually comes across as the typical annoying little brother. AJ also has long hair, but it's mostly wavy/straight, and blond. Both my sons are real lookers- if I do say so myself. You just have to ignore that their hair is seldom combed well, they're often wearing ripped or spotty clothes. (Because those feel the best.) Also, as far as Big Red is concerned, the only color shirt one needs is black, as in a black concert shirt of a heavy metal genre. I don't know which one I like better-the Slayer shirt with the big Pentagram, or the Metallica shirt with the skulls.

I get a little self-conscious sometimes when I'm in a place like Rayanne Dinner-a place frequented by Mennonites and other conservative people. It's smack-dab in the middle of Mennonite country. I tell my sons to be discreet, lower their voices, watch what they say. Usually, we are quite liberal in the lack of censorship of our children's rhetoric. Big Red and AJ were doing their typical impersonations which are a combination of their friend's Bi-Polar dad, Big Red's former guitar teacher, and....

the two boys in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure?

Big Red, especially regaled me with the most hilarious stories which are something straight out of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, or The Sandlot. "You should really write all this down, Red; it's great material for a story". The stories are mostly of a PG-13 nature, and at that I am getting nervous that we may offend some of the other diner patrons.

Then I stopped worrying, enjoyed my children's zany conversations, and relaxed because all of a sudden I realized....

My 11 & 15 year old sons are babbling on to me-their mother! They were sharing their lives with me, as most boys that age would not. They knew I'd laugh, reprimand them, say motherly words to temper their musings, but they kept on chattering away. So we enjoyed our meal, and if we offended anyone sitting nearby, I'm sure we also made some other people chuckle. It wouldn't be the first time. More than once I've had a little old lady pass my table, and tell me what wonderful children I have. And if a little old lady can look at two long-haired, boisterous-yea, sometimes obnoxious boys wearing ripped pants, & black shirts with skulls and Pentagrams, and tell me how nice they are....

then I must be doing something right!