You are at a nice Italian restaurant early one Saturday evening, trying to enjoy your meal, but a four year-old child, apparently high on amphetamines and a six-pack of Coca Cola, is bouncing off the walls. You are distracted from your scampi and risotto as she swings from the back of a stranger’s chair and tells her parents fantastic stories at the top of her voice despite them protesting under their breath. Then she runs back to the bar, climbs up onto a bar stool and smells a vase of yellow tulips there.

You wonder what the hell her parents are thinking, and why they ever bothered to reproduce if they can’t even keep their child quiet.

They are thinking this:

Father: “Gamma’s going to fall off that bar stool and hurt her leg.”
Mother: “I wonder if they’ll ever let us back into this restaurant after this production? Eh, oh well. Sure is nice to sit and have a glass of prosecco after a business trip to Japan. Cheers.”
Father: “Cheers. Only four and hanging out in bars. [Girl falls off bar stool and hurts leg, limps over to parents, complaining loudly.] I told you to sit down. I hope no one complains about the kid, cause then I’ll have to tell them to fuck off I was sorry.”
Mother: [To 12 year-old daughter] “What was that luxury hotel we stayed at in Japan, the Meridian or something?”
Older daughter: “Le Meridian.”
Father: [To no one in particular] “I have a daughter who corrects her mother about Japanese luxury hotels? I’ll have to blog this.” [Watches younger daughter run off again to get into more trouble.]

Far as I know, there is nothing you can do about an unruly child. Beta was always well-behaved in public, Gamma is only most of the time. But sometimes she gets tired and hungry and it is as if she were on drugs. Nothing gets through to her. The only alternative would have been to drag her, kicking and screaming, back out to the car. And that option was out because we were hungry, among other things.