These Kids Are My Kids

Tuesday night we attended a school fundraiser at the Cherry Hill Silver Diner, one in a chain of fake diners that has the same menu items as local mom-and-pop diners, but without all that worry about the food actually tasting good. The seven-year-old’s school PTA somehow ropes his school’s teachers and administrators into playing waiters and waitresses for one night, and the PTA gets a cut of the profits.

Even with part of the profits going to the PTA, Silver Diner must make a killing. These things (or the two we’ve gone to) are packed, with the line of people waiting to be seated going out the door. You can't tell me they're just coming for the food. There are kids running all over the place and families packed in like sardines (because another thing Silver Diner doesn’t bother imitating is an old-fashioned diner’s roomy booth).

Further adding to the crush of people is the fact that each teacher must be accompanied by a real waiter/waitress. This despite the fact that many of the teachers seemed to be better then what I've come to  expect from waiters these days. Who knows how to calm both parents and kids down better than teachers? It also helps that many of these teachers probably already have to work as waiters to supplement their lousy pay.

Not much to comment on about the restaurant. If you took down the signs I would have sworn it was a Friendly’s, crappy food, dirty floors, and all. I will say that having more than one person doing both face painting and balloon animals would have allowed our family to get out of there without having to physically remove the seven-year-old from the hour-long line screaming and crying while other parents looked on in sympathy. (The above picture of him standing on a chair washing the dishes is just to remind myself that he really is a good kid 99% of the time).

So we get back to the van, seven-year-old still crying and whining about not getting his face painted (never mind that he’s getting a shower the minute he gets home), and leave the parking lot to start our twenty-minute ride home when the two-year-old asks “are we almost home?” Which would be cute if his brother wasn’t still complaining in the booster seat next to him. Come to think of it, that’s probably why the two-year-old wanted to know. No, we are not almost home. To defuse the situation I suggest he sing songs. We go through his whole repertoire (Jingle Bells, Eagles Fight Song, Itsy-Bitsy Spider, etc.) – three times. I notice that somewhere in the third verse the two-year-old always slips back into the first verse, so the songs become unending. I’m thinking it’s time for his teachers, for the love of God, to teach some other songs (though I taught the boys the Eagles Fight Song, not their teachers).

All this leads up to a cool thing that happened last night. The seven-year-old and the missus were at a basketball game so it was just the two-year-old and me home. He’s playing with his Rescue Heroes and I’m watching ESPN (with its fascinating “will T.O. play or not” story on what seemed like a continuous loop) and a commercial comes on playing “This Land is Your Land.” The two-year-old says, “I know this” and starts singing. Woody Guthrie! Now we’re getting somewhere. So I start singing along and he goes into the second verse and I realize that I don’t know the second verse. So I try just singing the first again, but he’s not having it. “While I was walking…” then looking up at me to help him out. So I go on the internets and find the lyrics and we sing them together. With a country music twang for some reason.

Pretty cool, huh?

P.S. My Thursday Theme picture on Ipso Photo happens to be of the two-year-old.

P.P.S. Although the two-year-old wasn't interested in even the third verse, he's not the only one who avoid the last few verses of Woody's seemingly patriotic song. The forth and fifth verses could easily be brought back into fashion:

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

Comments

[Donna]

Awww. Thats all I can say. Awww. Tell the little guy I want to hear him sing when I see him next.

[Mark]

That's three "Awww"s in one day from you (including the one you left on Ipso Photo). You're flagged.

[deega]

Never will we go to these things again. We have fulfilled our quota!

[Donna]

Sorry, the awwwws are a bad habit picked up in my parenting email group. What else can you say to the 4,000 cute kid pictures that come through weekly lol. I swore off those restaurant school nights after my first and only experience wayyyy back when. They are a nightmare.

[dawn]

Would you prefer the diner gave your school no money, and they didnt have to supply a clown and crafts for no charge. Maybe you should stop being so ungrateful.Were you too good to wait in line for the clown? Get a life and stop blogging maybe you will have time for your kids!

[Dee]

Maybe before you go on someone's blog, you should know what you're talking about! If you actually read more than one post, you'd know that we spend tons of time with our kids. We weren't going to wait an hour in line so that the kid could go to bed late just so that he could get his face painted! That's called LIMITS!

Why are you so insulted anyway? Do you work there at the Diner?

[Mark]

So let me get this straight, Silver Diner offers crappy food in a crappy setting and overcharges for it, but I'm not allowed to criticize them because they give a few bucks to my kids PTA? Give me a break. My son's school might make a few bucks off the night, but Silver Diner gets more people in there for that one night then they get in a usual week. If they cared so much about my son's school, why didn't they just donate some money, no strings attached, and not force us to eat their horrible food.

And "am I too good to wait in line for a clown?" Yeah, I was too good, seeing how it was a school night and I had to get my kids to bed. Is it too much to ask that the people who run the restaurant figure out that there are going to be hundreds of kids there that night and adequately prepare for it? I don't think so.

"Get a life and stop blogging maybe you will have time for your kids!" Fuck you! You don't know me. You have no idea how much time I spend with my kids. I was in that crappy restaurant to spend time with my kids, but you obviously think that my blogging time would be better spent waiting in line for some stupid clown while my kids' bedtime slowly passes by. I do plenty of things with my kids (if you had bothered reading other posts on my blog you would have noticed that) and I know that wanting to do something for myself, like blogging, doesn't make me any worse a parent than someone who spends their free time leaving mean comments on other people's websites.

Sorry if I offended someone you know that works at that shitty restaurant, but if they're going to work at Silver Diner, they are going to have to get used to hearing people complain about it.

[Janie]

Bravo, Mark!

[dawn]

No I dont I have also done fundraising there and the place is always upbeat , friendly and they provide these things to schools free of charge, I will tell them to ban your school for your rude and ungrateful comments!

[Jill]

...and im sure you would do that, if you knew the school. Maybe you should spend more time with YOUR kids, instead of making threats to people who you know nothing about.