Cindy Hamilton wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 28, 2015 at 10:22:08 AM UTC-4, jmcquown wrote:
>
>> I accept that. I had chronic ear infections when I was a kid. Painful!
>> Then again, I wasn't flying all over the place as an infant. It
>> simply wouldn't have been the first thing I thought of. Pardon moi
>
> It's really a different world. Airfare is so much cheaper, families
> are so much more spread out, and children are included in adult
> activities so much more.
>
> Bringing this back to the original topic:
> eating in restaurants used to be a very special thing, once or
> twice a year when I was a child. I wasn't taken to restaurants
> until I could sit still and be quiet; we got dressed up and
> I was on my best behavior. (I was a cute, precocious little girl,
> and I made a perfect excuses for men to come over to the table to
> chat up my mother. Win-win for everybody.)
>
> Cindy Hamilton

It is a different world -- my first memory of going to a restaurant is
when my mom had her gallbladder removed and my dad took my sister and me
out rather than feed us more sandwiches. I had a hamburger and fries and
they tasted really good. It definitely wasn't a fancy place.

We've taken our kids out ever since they were infants and aside from a
couple of instances of tired crabbiness they've been great. We were at
a nice place (Palisade) one time when A. dropped his spoon on the floor,
and said to a gentleman at the next table, "gampa! gampa! I dopped my
poon!" At that age he wasn't so great with consonant blends, and oh yeah
any man with grey hair was "gampa". I thought it was really cute but
gampa just ignored him.