The Next Luciano
In your 30’s and just had a kid but don’t want to stop living the single Plateau Lifestyle ?
No worries! Take the infant with you to your local breakfast joint in Le Plateau and sit down with your friends and listen to them swap “who did what to whom last night” stories.
Hey, and if the little Pavarotti decides to start belting out La Boheme, because its in need of a diaper change, simply swap the poopy shorts for another at the table.
Nevermind the people glaring at you, they’re just jealous that they too don’t have the next pooping Luciano. Envy, one of the worst of the deadly sins.
That’s exactly what my girlfriend and I witnessed Sunday morning. A father/mother and friends at a table with an infant. As soon as they arrived, the little tenor started to wail like his pants were on fire. Turns out they were! With hot poop.
The mother promptly changed the little screamer’s diaper right there on the table where, inches away, other people were eating their breakfast.
Finally the waitress came over and explained that generally, we don’t do things like this in a civilized society. The little Luciano? Well, he promptly broke into La Traviata and continued to wail at the top of his lungs. We very quickly asked for the bill but the poor waitress was in over her head trying to get the computer to crank out all the bills of all the OTHER customers looking to get the hell outta there.
Is it me, or has Quebec society gone a little too Gaga for babies ? It’s one thing that I gotta pay to raise these rug rats with my tax money, but it’s another that I can’t eat breakfast in peace without some baby ripping his lungs open and crapping his shorts at the next table.
After the last provincial election, I read a letter to the editor in La Presse where a mother from Brossard stated that she voted ADQ because she hopes that one day the province will pay her fulltime to stay at home with her children (3 with one on the way) until they are old enough to leave the house. Furthermore, because her husband doesn’t make enough, she has to return to work as well. She felt this was unfair and that it was always her dream to stay at home and raise her children.
Huh, not half bad. I’ve had this dream to be a professional cyclist and ride my bike all over Europe and be paid for it. Problem is, I’m not good enough and no team would sign me. Hmm, ya think maybe Charest or even Dumont would pay for me to realize MY dream too ?
Keep in mind why this province needs babies: to pay the taxes to support the Baby Boomers retirement and help pay off the debt they left us with. In order to keep the tax money rolling in, we need more little Lucianos to continue to consume and consume.
Fuck you!
I am a parent with a child who goes out to eat with us and why not?!
Children over a certain age who don’t know how to behave in restaurants are problematic because they weren’t exposed to that environment enough as infants and toddlers.
I too pay taxes! I’m sure I pay taxes that benefit you.
You mention civilized societies, and how we don’t do certain things like change dirty diapers in public? Societies that forget that we all live together, and not alone, are the ones that have lower taxes and fewer services.
Let’s see how civilized it would be if the disadvantaged were left to fend for themselves. It has been proven that the societies with the fewest safety-nets are those with the higher rates of crime and most disenfranchised youth.
The idea that your plastic plateau brunch can’t stand a dose of reality is truly what’s wrong with society. I grew up in the plateau, I’ve been to the hot-spots, you can keep them!
Fuck you!
Clearly, Justin, you don’t have kids. :) Now, I for one, though living the high and exciting life of a single, kidless socialite, am all in favour of bringing the kids out into society as early as possible.
The parent you saw probably hasn’t slept in several months, and this is his/her first day they could manage out to meet their friends for any kind of human adult contact. This probably greatly impeded their ability to realize they should perhaps go to the bathroom and do the change there and not in view and scent of everyone else’s breakfast plates. Not everyone is de-sensitized to baby emissions, nor should they be.
There are happy mediums to be had, you know.
Hi Zura,
Definitely.
I never suggested kids be banned from restos.
I have no problems with kids in restos, having to trip over their strollers the size of Hummers and having deal with kids, being kids. That, doesn’t bother me in the least.
The kid however, who has been screaming bloody murder for the past 15 minutes and who’s parents decide to change its diaper at the table where people are eating is unacceptable.
But I suspect that’s what you meant by happy mediums and to that, I could not agree more.
No one should ever have to eat beside someone changing a dirty diaper – it’s unsanitary and completely rude.
As for crying babies – that’s life. Unless the parents thought nothing of it and let the kid cry, or encouraged poor behaviour.
And calm down with the f-words, your kids might hear you Alirio…
I love it! A little controversy on the metblog. I would have been appalled with smelling a dirty diaper being changed at breakfast, but squalling kids, hey, we were all that once. I’d be squalling too if I had my own shit smashed up against my rear end, lol.
As someone without kids, I probably don’t even have the right to an opinion if it isn’t shared by someone like you with kids, do I, Alirio? Luckily, this is a public blog, so I will say what I want.
Kids of any age going to restaurants screaming at the tops of their lungs, or running around without a care in the world, or otherwise fucking up my meal, are very annoying. Anything the parent can do to control this behaviour short of the illegal should be encouraged. Of course, when it is a baby, there isn’t much to be done except to choose a place that hopefully isn’t too populated, or a place that caters to families with squalling kids.
As for changing diapers at the table, come the fuck on! Are you seriously saying that it should be acceptable to subject everyone to the smell and possibly sight of shit, even the adorable, sublime baby shit when they are trying to eat? This is nearly as inconsiderate as me farting in your face at the table, then going back to mine because I didn’t want to deal with the smell.
Now just because I am not a Parent doesn’t mean that my opinion on this shouldn’t matter. I know this hasn’t been stated yet, but I bet that this is the sentiment felt by many. I HATE the smugness of “clearly you don’t have kids”.
Yes we all have to share. It’s bad enough that we have to deal with bawling or misbehaved children. Fecal matter really crosses the line. There are other members of society that should not have to deal with this at mealtime. It’s highly inconsiderate.
The original post struck me as MUCH more harsh than Justin’s own rebuttal/clarification afterwards. The way it came out to me (and probably to Alirio) was like this: Kids should not be seen or heard in places where childless people would want to be, which is everywhere cool. The vile little tax dollar guzzlers should stay at home where they don’t bother people. That’s pretty much how it came across.
My statement of “clearly, you don’t have kids” was more of a tongue-in-cheek over-statement of fact, I was not being smug at all. Heck, I don’t have kids either, and I hate the smug-marrieds and smug-parentals.
I think we can all continue to agree that shit at the breakfast tables is a no-no, though.
I think there’s a few different threads to explore here (if we explore them at all):
1) Aging former hipsters settling down, having kids and bringing them to all their old hipster hangouts, making them “family friendly” whether others agree or not;
2) Parents who, in an attempt to be unlike their own strict square un-with-it parents, eschew basic discipline in favour of raising their children like free-range monkeys;
3) People who have no sense of basic manners, hygiene, or ideas of social appropriateness. Re: chewing gum or food with mouth open and/or loudly; using your napkin as Kleenex at the table; putting your feet up on the seats at the theatre (shoeless — I’ve seen this more than once — ew); people that refuse to hold doors open for the next person; the groups of slow-moving people that take up a whole sidewalk five-abreast; I could go on but you get the idea.
It’s the little things that make living with other humans not only tolerant, but pleasant, and I fear that as every generation abdicates its responsibility to teach these basics to the next, we’re descending into a future of abnormally egocentric, solipsistic sociopaths with very high self-esteem…
Kudos to any parents who feel confident to take their babies out to breakfast…
Bitchslap to those who change their nappies on the table. Not good.
Mine is 2 1/2 months old and I don’t feel confident enough to take the wee man out – mostly out of concern for the ignorants who tut silently and disapprovingly because your kid has no means of expression other than crying. The same ignorants who will vent their disapproval on an online blog.
Those with no kids really have no concept as to how difficult having kids can be – and I don’t say that to be high and mighty or condescending – I freely admit that before J, I was one of them.
As Zura rightly said, sometimes the need to get out and make normal social contact outweighs the fact that baby screams may be distracting to those who are a little self absorbed.
And for fucks sake. It’s a breakfast place. It’s not Queue de Cheval, or some cosy romatic Italian Trattoria… have you traveled on a plane before? Should the kids be stored in the overheads or in cargo?
Parents pay taxes too. Does he feel the same about students? The elderly? The sick? Your comment about living the dream actually offended me more than your breakfast poop rant.
Idiot.
I recently read about the “stroller mom” phenomenon that is happing in Brooklyn where a lot of people are getting pissed off by the ridiculous sense of entitlement new yuppie moms have after they have a child. People complain about the militancy they possess when rolling their hummer sized strollers down the street (one person even told a story about how one mom rammed her stroller right through a drug deal) and god forbid you run into their stroller that is blocking a door of a bar (yes, a bar) or restaurant.
I think a parallel can be mad and it comes down to this sense of entitlement. These parents think “I have a baby, I’m better than you as a result, you don’t understand, and get the fuck out of my way”
First-off, phoque sounds just like fuck and my kid is not subject to surly language.
Secondly, my biggest problem with Justin’s post is this idea that taxes shouldn’t serve to help other people raise their kids.
Also, diapers in public and diapers on a table are different things. I am pro in-public changing, but anti public health threats. If that wasn’t clear in my first response, it should be know.
I guess I’m just waiting to read a met blog post about how awful those hipster posers are in public parks!
Peace… and courage.
E-erm…!
All I can say is that I’m happy I’m immigrating with a bunch of teenagers (not so happy for some other things but)… because I’ve heard the spookiest stories about living with babies or kids in Montreal, in an appt.
That most ppl want the kids to be ghostly quiet. No stomping feet, no running around, no shouting, no crying, no laughter…
Isn’t Montréal afraid of the way they are repressing future adults? What if the grow into the next Norman Bates?
I truly reprimend the woman who changed diapers in public (that is something you would see in Mexico because sometimes restaurants don’t have changing stations or even bathrooms!) but the whole idea towards children being extra quiet and babies stop crying and things like that… really make me love more my teens.
And makes me wonder what kind of parents certain peeps had.