"Kids love jokes. So one day, I told my 7-year-old nephew that I would take him to Disney World. Instead, I drove him to a burned out warehouse and said, "Uh-oh, Disney World burned down." He cried and cried, but deep down, I bet he thought it was pretty funny." ~ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts
A couple of weekends ago, I had a hankering for a Tour of Italy, so I decided to make a trip down to the local Olive Garden for dinner. Little did I know the evening's excursion would leave me promoting a tour of the Ten Courts of Hell (and other assorted attractions) for an ignorant-assed restaurant patron and her offspring.
Before I get into the details, let me just say that I love Olive Garden. I mean, c'mon, free salad and breadsticks? This unfortunate event could have taken place in any restaurant, any business, any public place. This experience just happened to go down in the O.G.
So, anyway, I'm just about to start twirling up some grub when I hear it. Actually, I didn't hear it as much as it launched an all-out assault on my eardrums and on those of everyone else in the restaurant. It sounded like a bunch of kittens, a bunch of kittens wearing all-steel-wool kitten jumpsuits and lapel microphones while chasing a toy mouse around a box made of chalkboard with the microphones wired through
Kirk Hammett's stack of Randall Amplifiers. With the volume turned all the fucking way up. Only louder.
"It" was the sound of a preschool-age kid's scream, and it brought everything in the entire restaurant to a complete and total fucking stop. Forks stopped half-way to mouth. The fat guy in the bathroom stopped peeing mid-stream. Water stopped boiling in the kitchen. And everyone turned to look at the kid's table.
As life's demand for oxygen would allow, the screams kept coming. It sounded like Axl Rose was fist-raping Kid Rock in the dining room.
And the
only people who didn't seem to notice? The kid's mom and her friend. Sitting not two feet from the source of these kidney-quaking shrieks, these two ladies seemed as oblivious as
Clay Aiken at the Playboy Mansion.
Everyone in the restaurant was forced to suffer for another 20 minutes before the two finally settled their check and headed out. Once they were gone, cheers erupted throughout the dining room. Seriously.
And so, to the ladies who didn't seem to notice junior's hellish wailing, I have a few suggestions. They're ones I'm certain my fellow restaurant goers would endorse. First of all, wake the fuck up. Ignoring that sort of behavior ain't getting the job done. Your little one may already be so discipline-depraved that even the above-referenced Jack Handey Plan wouldn't straighten him out.
So allow me to suggest a trip to
Singapore's Haw Par Villa.

It's mostly outdoors, so he can shrill to his heart's content whilst simultaneously having his behavior adjusted by visiting such attractions as the Crab With Human Head, the Evil Horse With Spiked Club and, my personal favorite, Filthy Blood Pond.
If you're not skilled enough to leverage Haw Par Villia as a disciplinary strategy, then kindly keep the fuck away from my Olive Garden.