Milestones you never expect

There are moments in your life that are forever imprinted in the picture album/movie theatre of your mind. I did not wake up this morning thinking that one of those moments would occur today. After a very busy day, the hub and I dropped off the children at our friends' house and went to school for a parent teacher conference with the boy's teacher. As parents you always want to think the best things about your child, but it is always nice to have them confirmed by an expert in their field. So we walked out of school, heads slightly bigger than when we had entered and went on to start our evening. I picked the kids up who were terribly disappointed to have only stayed in the disco ball heaven known as our friends' basement for 45 minutes. The hub went to feed the dog before she chewed through all of my cookbooks and checked the mail. I had not had time to plan for tonight's dinner, so we decided to go to a restaurant. G has wanted to go to O'Charley's for months, but with an average wait of 312 minutes, we have not gotten there. Tonight was her night...no wait, no problem. Our waitress was a lovely girl who was losing her voice. You know that when the wait staff see a family with three kids they are in a back corner drawing straws to see who has to get them. I am very proud to say that my children have great manners and behave quite well in restaurants, but I understand the working side of it. She sat us down and started to get our drink orders. The hub, S and I got water. G decided to get pink lemonade. Now, in his defense, the boy's order got screwed up when fresh made strawberry lemonade was offered up as an option....but not for the kid's meal. He had to rethink his whole drink to meal combination. I get that. So when she asked him for the third time what he wanted to drink, this was his reply: "I want...umm...may I please have...oh, what do you call it? Oh yeah...may I please have a scotch?". If a record player had been going in the background, you would have heard the ripping sound of the needle scraping across the LP. The waitress's eyes got huge. The table next to us sat, mouths open in either horror or shock or pre-guffaw...I'm not sure. I didn't know what to do. I was frozen in the can I laugh at the inappropriateness of his choice or would that be encouraging something. We as parents are sometimes so over programmed to overthink every situation, we can't just immediately laugh at what is funny. The waitress broke the tension by saying, "That..totally...just ...made...my...DAY!!!". Our section of the restaurant simultaneously exploded into laughter. The boy was quite pleased, even though he had no idea what he said. After we all got control of ourselves, he made his order....the scotch of the five year old....Sierra Mist. After that, if he dropped anything or when he ran into the wall on the way out, staff kept making remarks like, "You'd better cut him off" or "He really likes his booze." Gotta love the support of others.

I thank God for moments like that. I'll never forget it.

And for the record, we have never had a drink in front of him...especially scotch.  Okay, maybe butterscotch.


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