On taking my kids to B-Dub

The only reason I knew of this establishment in our little downtown walking district is because Loverpants had taken the kids there before and called it a successful time. There were reports of children (whom I birthed) willfully consuming food matter in a restaurant, and actually behaving themselves in a public place, versus behaving like those dancing noodles that are often scene flagging your attention at car washes or the like.

So I suppose you could say this was all Loverpants' fault.

A few weeks ago, the kids and I had frolicked at a playground in the afternoon and were henceforth requiring sustenance. I was in the kind of mood that one experiences who spends many days in a row with people who basically eat only 4 foods, not 4 food groups but just 4 foods (cereal, fruit, veggie turkey slices, mac n' cheese, rinse and repeat) gets in where she cannot SHE CANNOT. Not anymore. I was feeling faint and wanting to just sit and order from a menu and then for that food to miraculously appear on a tray before me. My stars! I think this might not just be a stardust fantasy, but, lo, I believe such a place actually does exist!

So, my children ventured once more to the magical emporium known as Buffalo Wild Wings, this time with their mother. I remembered that Loverpants had mentioned the kids ate well when he took  them to B-Dub. Soft pretzels and chicken wings and french fries--oh my! As I am a vegetarian, I don't usually go to places whose main export is the fried poultry, n'ah mean? So, this was my maiden voyage to B-Dub.

The place was, as advertised, and you have my full permission to roll your eyes so far back into your skull that you actually gag on them, because I really was happy to be there, n0t because I like sports or beer or chicken, but I like cheap food that my kids will eat. Judge if you must.

We ordered and all was going well. Until...

Until this man who looked to be a waiter because he was wearing a B-Dub jersey sidled up to our table.

He just kept chatting with me. It went something like this:

Hey, how are you guys doing? We're good, thank you!

So...do you guys come here often? Thinking: What is that? A pick-up line for my 6 and 3 year-old? Yeah, buddy. They're regulars here. Never miss a Braves game on the big screen.

What did you order? Thinking: Oh gosh. Is he asking me what I ordered to drink because he thinks I'm a single mom and wants to send me over a pity drink?

Well, I just wanted to tell you about a new position we created here... Thinking: Oh he DEFINITELY thinks I am a single mom and wants to offer me a pity job! Oh this is the worst!

See, so I'm the new guest experience Captain, and it's my job to make sure you're having a great time! Thinking: Ack! He's a cruise director for B-Dub!

So if you want to try a new wing flavor or change the TV channel, just give me a shout, all right? I am so embarrassed. For him. For me. For humanity. 

The good Captain then wrote down his name for me, which, once again, felt like some flirtypants leaving his number for me on the check, call me maybe? Ugh.

Then I looked over at a table of high school kids in their prom attire. And as if going to B-Dub for prom dinner didn't strike me as odd enough, the kids were sitting at one end of the table and their parents were sitting at the other.  I thought that situation seemed very Duggar-style but what do I know? Times, they are a-changin'...Patrons can't order wings without a shaman named John the Guest Experience Captain helping them navigate the menu. High schoolies can't go anywhere without their helicopter parents.

This was all hitting me at once, and so I wondered, dear readers. Seen anything new and exciting lately? Do share....

Freakodontics

As if sixth grade were not awkward enough, I spent mine as an orthodontic freak show. I was eleven years-old when I went under the knife for an impacted incisor tooth. Basically, one of my eye teeth was trying to shoot through the roof of my mouth. The oral surgeon exposed the tooth (ouch), attached a bracket to the exposed tooth (mommy!) and tied the bracket to the wire of my braces (ouch to your mother!).

Yeah, I was into heavy metal in the 6th grade.

It was very Looney Toons dentist with a string pulled taut between two teeth. The goal was to drag the one tooth into place, but I kept waiting for the string to break and some dental work to go flying.

The string that was supposedly guiding my tooth into place was knotted off in a big heap. It resembled a soggy piece of popcorn. I’d be giving my oral presentation on cumulus clouds at the front of the classroom and watch as the furrowed brows of my classmates tried to tell me: Kendra, you have a piece of--

I know. A piece of popcorn stuck in my braces.

The process of relocating my rogue tooth took three months, which translates to a biblical eternity of stale popcorn smiles in the social minefield that is sixth grade.

The good news is that it worked. The even better news is that I get to regale every dental professional with my history of freakodontics.

The Stanton children were an orthodontic powerhouse. I also rocked the mushroom cut long after the age it was okay to do so.

***

When I was 22, I went to a dentist whose office was near the community center where I worked in Boston. While the dental hygienist scraped and picked, I noticed a list on the office wall. The list included the names of all the patients who would be seen by the dentist that day, and next to the names were the patients’ phone numbers.

I considered the at-risk youth that I would be working with that afternoon, whom I saw every day but whom I made sure never got a hold of my phone number.

When the dentist entered, I asked him about the policy of placing patient names with contact information in such a public place. He said it convenienced the staff, having all the information so handy. But couldn’t the list be placed where no patient could read it? I asked.

I watched as the dentist took a ballpoint pen and crossed off my name and phone number. “That all right?” he asked. “No one can read it now.”

Feeling violated, I called the HIPAA hotline to see if I might have a case against this dentist for what seemed to me a sloppy management of personal information. The hotline attendant said my case was weak, especially as the list had been posted in a room with a limited viewership. It wasn’t as if the whole waiting room was privy to our digits.

I staged a silent protest of the dentist’s policies, like spitting into the wind. I never went to see him again.

***

Within four minutes of being seated in the chair at my dentist's office in the south, the dental hygienist, whom I had only just met that day, asked me about my plans to add more children into my life. She scraped and picked and gave me the sucking implement for when it was time to spit.

My mouth ajar, the only reflex I could control was my urge to spit. This is, as I have learned since sixth grade, sometimes all any of us can control.

Until we open our mouths, we can conceal so much. Our fears about invasion of privacy. Our feelings about having a(nother) baby. Our pieces of stale popcorn, real or facsimile, wedged conspicuously between our braces.

They told me to put my chin down because my glasses were causing a glare here. I thought it was my pearly white teeth!

My relationships with dental professionals have been numerous and frequent. In many ways, I can thank them for exposing not only my teeth, but my deeply-lodged fears and anxieties.

But I also find that our fears and chagrins have a way of fighting their way out. Every sixth grader eventually finds reason to speak. Just as every dental patient will eventually find reason to cry, “ouch” or “stop.” When the moment of truth finally arrives, we cannot reverse history. The laws of motion seem to make no exemption for spit.

It doesn’t take an oral surgeon to expose our most hidden deposits. Sometimes all any of us has to do is open up and say, “Ah.”

Here's the dentist - dr-averbuch.co.il.

Fresh hell in the fifth grade

Fifth grade was a year on the fringes. Everyone got nicknames that year (Mine was 'Dra, what an unfortunate nickname). The inside jokes ran rampant. We had sex ed. Our skin was starting to freak out, our moods swung back and forth like erratic pendulums. We memorized Color Me Badd lyrics as we danced around stocking footed in our Umbro shorts. Confusing times. That was the same year the boys in my class stashed a girlie magazine in the boys' bathroom. Catholic school bore down on this discovery. The boys from the 3 fifth grade classes were hauled off to--we were not told where. I thought maybe to do some kind of chore, like picking up trash in the baseball fields as punishment for being smart alecs.

Instead they were taken to the church rectory where Father Tony lived. I learned later that Fr. Tony had a heart-to-heart session with 45 boys about the matter of the birds and bees.

At the time, I had thought. Oh, good. Man-talk. Holy confession without the penance. That's nice. The girls got to play Mum's the Word with a koosh ball and ate Sweet Tarts that Miss Mather had stashed in her desk drawer.

But some twenty years later, all I can think is: Fr. Tony should have gotten Sweet Tarts for life.

Where is the justice? That poor priestman! He took vows of poverty and chastity and has to wear an unattractive collar all day and live right next to his workplace and what does this man with huge hands and very large glasses get in return?

What, I ask you??

He gets 45 hormonal rageballs over at his home in the middle of the week asking questions about the mechanics of boom-chicka-bow-wow. And nobody slipped him a tip or sent in any reinforcements.

There is a special place in Heaven for Fr. Tony. I don't think they allow fifth graders to visit. Not for all of eternity.