I ate at a preppy Latin chain restaurant this evening.
\nNever mind which one.<\/p>\n
A child in a stroller,
\nand his marginally older brother,
\nhad settled into a booth
\nwaiting for Mom and Dad to bring their food.<\/p>\n
Between the register and the table,
\nMom and Dad decided it was a nice evening
\nto eat outdoors on the patio.<\/p>\n
Stroller-son, however, had already staked his homestead As children will, (No one actually looked<\/em> at him of course. That would have been rude.)<\/p>\n Then he wound down.<\/p>\n Silence ensued.<\/p>\n A quick upward jab of the thumbs reseated my fillings, Was the child finished? Exhausted already?<\/p>\n Or was he just reaching down into himself, We waited in that golden span of quiet, strangers huddled in the eye of a hurricane. <\/p>\n The tension grew with every moment. <\/p>\n Time seemed to stop. Stronger men than I were already weeping with fear.<\/p>\n Then, an unexpected Deus ex Machina: We knew without looking that the child was on the other side, “What-evah. Talk to the hand.”<\/p>\n Original idea published on the Shelley Berman site, May 4, 2004.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I ate at a preppy Latin chain restaurant this evening. Never mind which one. A child in a stroller, and his marginally older brother, had settled into a booth waiting for Mom and Dad to bring their food. Between the register and the table, Mom and Dad decided it was a nice evening to eat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nand was not<\/strong> “down” with the concept of moving.<\/p>\n
\nhe publicized his displeasure
\nwith a single, temple-jarring howl of wild abandon.<\/p>\n
\nand I knew in my spine the meaning of “pregnant pause”:<\/p>\n
\nreloading with magnum rounds,
\npreparing himself for the short, one-note aria
\nthat would stall the soda machine
\nand set off the car alarms in the nearer rows?<\/p>\n
\nthe door thumped closed. <\/p>\n
\nand our cowering flipped instantly to bravado
\nknowing as we did that we were now safely beyond the child’s blast radius:<\/p>\n