One of my favorite new haunts since I've moved down south is called, "Double D's Steakhouse". It's a large, usually sparsely populated steakhouse with a bar. They have numerous, large LCD televisions, 3 high quality, regulation sized, pocketed billiard tables, reasonably priced beer and very decent food. And, if the bartender sees that you're actually drinking or ordering food, he will usually write off the pool rental and you'll get it for free. My kind of place. A very interesting thing happened at DD's today.
As I was playing pool with myself (I was losing), a proverbial clown car of children and rednecks suddenly flooded in the door. I've never understood people's compulsion to bring their offspring to places where people obviously go to get away from things like children... such as a bar.
The five children looked to be exactly nine months apart in age (big surprise there), the oldest being around 8 years old. And they were LOUD! Not just loud in the sense that they spoke loudly or cried. But pointlessly, shamelessly noisy. Making noise seemed to be what they were doing for entertainment in the absence of their infernal video games -- like a playground swing set or a game in which the point was to make the most, constant, loud sounds emanate from your body as possible. As their parents sat and ordered food, these children ran in circles around the entire establishment -- past tables where people were eating, through the billiards area where I was playing, around the bar where people were trying to enjoy a quiet drink or watch the hockey game -- just screaming! No words were being formed. No communication was being made in the slightest way. Just screaming. It sounded like someone had shot a baboon in the nuts with rock salt and left him in the restaurant to slowly die.
Well, no one was happy with this. The children were annoying every customer in the place, with the exception of the parents. At one point, I entertained the idea that if I reached out and ripped an arm off one of the little bastards as he ran by, the sounds he was making wouldn't change in the least and he might bleed to death before anyone knew what happened.
I grit my teeth as best I could and tried to put up with it -- but I couldn't. After about ten solid minutes of noise that would make a seal clubber wince, I stepped out from behind my pool table, into the path of the oncoming child-train. They stopped and looked up at me with wide, "Oh shit!" eyes, and I said three words to them.
"Stop. Making. Noise."
The children slowly backed away from me, afraid more of taking their eyes from me than walking into something behind them. They looked as though no one in their entire life had ever spoken those words to them before and they were simply mystified as to why someone -- especially someone outside of their tiny collection of recognizable faces -- would be displeased with something like noise. I might as well have told them to stop breathing.
Eventually, the children sauntered back toward their parents' table and I prepared for the inevitable "phase two".
Sure enough, not three minutes of glorious silence went by before a heavy-set man wearing an orange plaid, flannel shirt and a NASCAR ball cap was marching toward me and my billiard game (which I was still losing, by the way). He began his conversation with me from about 20 feet away, still walking toward me. The voice he spoke with sounded something like if someone were to take Reginald Ferris's sphincter and turn it inside out in a meat grinder... "Hey! Hey, you say something to my kids?"
I remained calm, as I've learned the hard way to do lately, and politely replied. "Yes sir, I did. I told them to stop making noise."
The man huffed and pointed back toward five sets of frightened eyes peeking over their table to watch Pappa Bear give me a good talking to. "Now, you don't have any right to say a goddamn thing to my kids!"
What I said next slapped the man's brain so hard, he'll be walking backwards for weeks.
I smiled a little. "Whatever gave you that idea?"
The look of what was sheer anger and rage not ten seconds ago suddenly turned into one of incomprehendable confusion. I found it funny, yet not surprising, that the only word he could think to say next was, "What?"
Trying not to laugh at the poor guy, I reminded him. "The idea that I don't have a right to speak to your children."
The bear turned into a fish. His mouth opened and closed several times, as though he couldn't quite select a particular response listed in his Terminator cyborg-vision.
He stammered a bit. "Be - because they're my children!"
I smiled more. "I'm someone's child, yet you appear to have the right to speak to me."
Cha-ching! I saw it in his eyes. They spun over like a slot machine until they landed on the words, "Oh shit!" in one eye, and "I lost" in the other. I grew a massive victory boner on the spot.
I casually picked up my cue and resumed my game, and without even paying him the courtesy of looking at him when I spoke, I said, "If you truly want to press the issue, please find me the legal reference under which citizens of the United States do not have the right to speak to children and I will apologize to you and your family."
And... PLUNK... I sank my shot. It was like the final blow of cum right in the dipshit's eye.
My day has been okay, I suppose.
