You know that ramen place I keep mentioning? The one with the line so insane that you have to show up an hour before it opens and get your name on the waiting list if you want to eat anytime in the near future?
We keep going back.
Every single time, we say that we’re going to leave at exactly 10:10AM – the precise minute that would get us to the restaurant in time to have our name be among the first on the list. And then, according to this plan, we’ll hang out at a playground or get coffee or something before heading back to the restaurant at 11:30, at which point the restaurant will finally opens its doors so we can eat our perfect, perfect ramen and go about the rest of our day all happy and full of soup.
And every single time, our plan fails us. A child can’t find a shoe, or a jacket is buried somewhere underneath a bed, or hey Kendrick, did you walk the dogs? Because I totally didn’t walk the dogs. And so on, and without fail we end up leaving at the precise moment that ensures our arrival behind the exact number of people required to fill up the restaurant. Which means that we have to wait for an entire restaurant’s worth of people to eat and pay and leave (a “full turn,” in restaurant parlance) before we can begin eating our damn noodles.
And yet we do. Wait. Every time. Because as much fun as it is eating tsukemen and fried chicken with garlic sauce (oh my god, the garlic sauce), we always have even more fun during the hour or so we spend hanging out on the street outside, waiting for our name to be called. I mean it: always. The kids each get to pick one tiny toy from the weird little vending machines along the wall (last time they chose two-inch-long rubber turkeys that hatch little bubble eggs out of their butts, and they were absolutely as disgusting as they sound), and we run around in circles and rifle through my purse looking for lollipops and come up with odd little nonsense games to play and are just together.
There’s a huge culture nowadays around the scheduled entertainment of children. It’s not just “go play, kids” – it’s the entire family engaging in organized (and often pricey) activities specifically targeted at the enrichment of their offspring. And on balance that’s obviously a good thing – we’re constantly making the circuit of children’s museums and libraries and toddler-sized amusement parks and aquariums and such, and it’s fun for our kids and it’s fun for us.
But still: it’s nice, every once in awhile, to remind yourself – and your children – that sometimes it can be just as cool to sit together on the sidewalk. No toys, no bright lights, no games: just you and your family and a tiny colony of ants going about their day.
