The Olive Garden Visit from the Dark Side

I love Olive Garden. My entire (small) family does. So tonight, to celebrate my wife's birthday (July 3rd), we drove to Muncie to eat.

Long before we got to our seats, I heard them. Him, actually. HE was the loudest.

"I wanna sit by mommy. iwannasitbymommy. I-WANT-TO-SIT-BY-MOMMY! IWANNASITBYMOMMY!!!!!!!!!!!!"

And, the hostess sat us at the table, you guessed it, right next to them.

4 adults, 6 kids. Only one adult seemed to care, and he (the only adult male in the group) was a wimp of a parent.

After a while of "IWANNASITBYMOMMY", and lots of crying, Mr Wimp finally let the kid sit by mommy. I promise, this is a fact with my hand up: That kid's butt had no sooner hit the seat beside mommy, than I heard "I WANNA SIT BY DADDY!!!!!!!"

Dad: "What's going on here?"

Kid: "I wanna sit by daddy!"

Dad: "Be quiet!"

Kid: "I wanna sit by Daddy!"

Dad: "Knock it off!!!"

Kid: (Do I really need to tell you what the kid said???)

Dad: "Oh, come on, Nicholas."

And, on it went, for another ten minutes, until the dad took that kid to the table right behind me, where the other five kids were sitting.

Well, now we have Dad and Nicholas and five other pre-teen kids sitting right behind me. As in 18 inches behind me. (We need to talk to Olive Garden about how close they put those tables!)

I was hoping that with Dad moving to the "kids table" that it would get a bit quieter. Yeah, right.

At one point, I asked my wife if the part of the room behind me was destroyed. As soon as the words started leaving my mouth, one kid body slammed another one into the wall behind me. Literally.

Twice, one kid or another bumped the back of my chair so hard I almost swallowed my fork. Dad: "Hey, be careful. You hit that guy!"

And then I heard Dad say to one kid or another, "No, your mom was tested, she's going to be fine!"

While all of this was going on, the three adult women never made one move or said one thing to try and quiet this motley crew. Not until we were almost ready to leave did any one of them say a word to the kids about their "activity."

Most of OUR conversation consisted of "Huh?" and "I'm sorry, but I can't HEAR YOU!"

I wanted to ask the server to seat us elsewhere, but my wife did not want to "cause a scene." I wanted to cause a big scene. BIG SCENE!!! One other couple who had been seated after we were asked to be seated elsewhere, and they quickly left our area.

Since they had been seated when we arrived, I was hoping they would leave before we did so that we could have at least some semblance of a nice quiet dinner. Nope, as we stood to leave, so did they, and they followed us, loudly, out the front door of the restaurant.

And as we pulled out the drive, Dad was chasing 6 kids all over the parking lot, a worried look on his face. The ladies stood on the front sidewalk and talked.

Oh, the things I wanted to say...