Kids ordering. donuts and the Breakfast club!

Dear America,

It is not cute when you let your kids order in a store. In fact it can be a little annoying!

Love Always,

Brian

There is a new trend sweeping the nation! Parents are letting their kids order when they go to a restaurant. Now I am not talking about a ten year old, or even an eight year old, hell I am not even talking about a six year old, I am talking of kids that range from the age of one to four. Five is a kind of no man's land, a veritable toss up. Kind of a Almond Joy/ Mounds kind of thing, Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't. By that I mean that sometimes the kids will order, and sometimes they will not.

As I was standing behind the counter the other day, trying to resist the urge to grab the donuts and hurl them at people, I had a customer walk up and order. The mother ordered, the father ordered and the teenage son all ordered. Then it was little Sally's turn. Sally is three. She is cute. She has the pig tails with the satin ribbon that is pink. She is so tinny you could just put her in your pocket and eat her up. She wears all pink with little sandals that sparkle like my hopes in the sun. She will either grow up to be a very cheery cheerleader, or she will be the goth girl that sits in the back of class and eats her hair. She will be Molly Ringwald or Allie Sheedy. ( If you do not get this reference to the Breakfast Club then you must stop what you are doing, go out and rent this movie and watch it. if you do not you may never read this blog again!)

So our young lady, our future Molly or Allie, is being held by her mother and mother says...

Mother: "Sally tell the nice man what you want."

Now let us be clear about something. I am a nice person. I do what I can to be the person that God and my parents raised me to be. Sally does not know this. To Sally the nice man is Santa or the guy a Publix that gives her a free cookie every time she comes in. I could easily be this man if I had a relationship with Sally. If we saw eachother on a daily basis then I would be the nice man. To my customers like Susan or Wilma that come in everyday I am the nice man that makes their coffee and smiles as I had it to them I spend thirty to fourty seconds of the day smiling for them and asking them how they are or telling them how pretty they are. So to them I am the nice man. To Sally I am the slightly over weight man in a very large blue shirt that sweats a little and is wearing a hat with a headset on it. I am not the nice man. I do not have the keys to the kingdom, the power is not mine, I may not collect 200 dollars I may not pass go. I am sure that Sally wants to scream and run away..... I know that sometimes I do.

So what does Sally do after mommy tells her to order from the nice man? That's right she does what any future Molly or Allie would do, she buries her head in her mothers shoulder and looks away. This does not stop Mommy from repeating that Sally needs to order from the nice man. After about a min of not ordering from the nice man Mommy trots out her next plan.

Mother: "Sally would you like the pink donut with sprinkles?"

We have not reached the point in our program where Mother is going to list all of the donuts. This is usually where we can tell who Sally will become. You see Mother will start with all of the girly pretty donuts. We will look at the pinks and the whites, the chocolate frosted with sprikels, or the sugar raised because they sparkle. If little Sally picks one of these then she will be a Molly. It will be all sunshine and happiness. She will lead others in cheers, she will be bubbly and happy and most likely date a guy names Biff. Ohhh but if she orders outside the pretty pretty pink princess donuts it is all over. If she orders a chocolate frosted we still have a chance of Molly, after all women love chocolate. If she orders a maple or an old fashioned then we have an Allie. Sally will sit in the back of class and eat her hair. She will shy away from everyone and one day in detention Molly will take Sally and take her from Allie to Molly.

But I digress. What I am really getting at is that we need to get back to the good old days. When I was but a wee lad, my father did not give me a choice. Daddy would order the donuts, and we would eat them and be grateful. You see, once upon a time I dared to say that I did not want a glazed donut. I wanted a lemon filled ( I was always a strange kid) and what was my father's response? No donuts for Brian! Now some of you might think that this is harsh, but I will tell you something. It made me realize that there are consequences in life. That you have to make a choice, and mommy will not always be there to point out all of the pretty pretty princess donuts. I had to learn to thing for myself. Also there was never a nice man in a blue shirt wearing a hat with headphones and sweating just a little, that wanted to throw donuts at me. I was also not a Molly or an Allie. I was not Michael Anthony Hall (Brian) or Emilo Esteves, or Judd Nelson. No I was me. I was me because my parents taught me that sometimes you have to make up your own mind, but more importantly, they taught me that sometimes you just have to work with the donut that you are handed.