Did you ever have a conversation in a public place that, upon further reflection, might sound weird taken out of context to the people around you? And have you ever had one of those conversations at top volume at dinner time in a busy restaurant? I know I have. Last night, actually. I was trying to get my three-year-old to eat his buttered noodles that we had purchased for him. I know, I know. Buying food for a three-year-old is a rookie mistake, but he loves noodles!
He may love noodles, but he was not eating them fast enough for my liking, so I pretended that I was going to eat them first. A little, well, not reverse psychology exactly, ummm, sideways psychology? Well, whatever it was, it worked. So of course I started out, in my loud opera voice, saying: “I’m going to get your noodle!”
That’s not so bad, right? I mean, we were in a restaurant that serves noodles. Totally appropriate thing to say. And I may have said something along the lines of “I’m going to GRAB your noodle!” But again, there were noodles on the table.
I suppose it got weird when my daughter tried to give me a fork. You see, I was pretending that I was going to pick up his noodles with my fingers, but Ruby felt that this was not realistic enough, and so tried to make me use silverware, which I was not interested in doing, since this was only a game anyway. “Daddy, just fork it!” she insisted.
“I will NOT fork his NOODLE!” I said, a little too loudly, causing my wife to break into hysterics across the table. It took me about a second and a half to realize that maybe I could have phrased that differently. Of course this just set my son off, shouting and giggling away.
“Don’t touch my noodle!” he shouted a few times, all the while shrieking in glee. Now, you must understand that his shrieks sound like he is being attacked half the time, so I felt that perhaps he should not be hollering this at me in a public place while laughing in a way that could be construed as a cry for help.
But the important thing to take away from all of this is that, yes, he did scream things in public like “I love grabbing my noodle!” but in the end, he ate his dinner. So, aside from humiliating public shame that will follow me around for the rest of my life, the whole thing was a huge success. No regrets. And I never even had to fork anyone’s noodle.