Seated at IHOP with A and her grandma this morning, I looked to my left and was shocked to see...a mother condoning - if not insisting upon - her young son's coffee consumption. Coffee. What? This kid was maybe 12. Maybe. Perhaps a somewhat heftier version of 12, but 12 nonetheless. And the mom was instructing him on the correct way to add half & half into the mix.
However, it wasn't the young kid drinking the old beverage that ultimately threw me off, but rather my being so quick to throw a flag at this supposed breach in player conduct. How is letting your kid sip on caffeine-ridden coffee and different than, say, letting them sip on caffeine-ridden coke? Skip to the end: no difference.
So why have I equated the idea of kids drinking coffee to a trip into bizarro-world? An alternate realm where everything is backwards and horses ride people and blue is really green. It always seemed so strange to me. Maybe because neither my mom, nor my dad, nor my brother, nor any of my friends growing up ever touched the stuff. Maybe in other bizarro-world houses just outside my zone, coffee flowed like water. People loved it. Kids bathed in it. Coffee cakes replaced the rubber ducky. I don't know...
But apparently since a record didn't skip and the whole restaurant didn't stop in its tracks at the notion of this child sipping on a grandpa drink, I must be the one outta the loop. I must be the one who needs more worldly knowledge. Get out of my bubble and put my feet in the grass. Bizarro as that feels...
No comments:
Post a Comment