I wandered over to Panera for breakfast and to write this morning. When I got here, it was quiet. I found my favorite seat next to the fireplace and window and set up, prepared to relax. As I was engaged in today’s research (Zen — I hear people talk about it all the time but don’t know much about it), a couple with two kids occupied the bench and chairs on the side of the fireplace opposite to me. Mom pulled out her laptop and began pecking away while dad went to get whatever they were going to get. Not long after (I’m engrossed in minding my own business and listening to my iPod), the piercing sound of young children’s voices penetrates my fog. The boy was four or five, and the girl was around three. They’re screaming as only kids that age can scream and are bouncing around or running around the table. Mom is oblivious. Dad hasn’t come back from getting their stuff yet. I wait a minute, figuring to give the parents a chance to act. The people at the table behind them clear out. I get up to empy my trash and scout another place I like to sit around the corner and out of direct fire. Two ladies who had been acting as if they wanted to sit in the area near where I was grabbed the table I was thinking about. I returned to my table and noticed dad was talking quietly and seriously to the little boy. Little boy appeared to be listening. I sat down. Maybe things would calm down. Less than two minutes later I hear the loud voices of children again. The little girl is standing not far from me and beginning to sniffle. Mom is still oblivous (really, lady, they won’t go away if you ignore them). At this point, I pick up my recently refilled coffee cup, computer sleeve and computer, and walk outside to the patio. Ahhhh. Peace. It’s a beautiful day. That’s as Zen as I can be. A true Zen-master would have been able to tune all that crap out, but I’m not there.<\/p>\n
On the patio, only brief shrieks carrying through the glass to periodically shatter the peace. For about an hour. Then I heard the kids outside at the other end of the patio — running and shrieking around the pillars. Clearly, they’re normal kids with a lot of energy to burn who didn’t want to be cooped up with mom and dad in a coffee shop this morning. But I don’t need to be subjected to that crap. I found myself wishing they’d be smushed under a car (No. In reality, that wouldn’t have been a good thing, but in fantasyland…). Then mom came out and sat at a table and watched them run. Eventually, dad came out and they ambled to their minivan, smiling all the way (was this a planned mission to torture the Panera customer base?). They loaded up the beasts and drove away.<\/p>\n
This is why I detest kids. Kids that are well-behaved in public (and there are many of them)? I love those kids. They are a joy.<\/p>\n
The problem is, you can’t always tell at first glance which kids are which. Back to writing. All you hen-pecked parents trying your best to raise productive members of society whom I’ve just annoyed and insulted? Feel free to write back with your side of the story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I wandered over to Panera for breakfast and to write this morning. When I got here, it was quiet. I found my favorite seat next to the fireplace and window and set up, prepared to relax. As I was engaged in today’s research (Zen — I hear people talk about …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}