And it’s close to USM so wow – I completely didn’t see that.

Anyway, thank you for the wonderful books and websites!

I still think it’s a valid point–and this thread may not be the correct forum to make it in–that adult-only space is rapidly shrinking, and that of all places for a kid to be, a bar is not one of them.

Having said that, I’ve said my peace on this and I don’t want to annoy anyone else by making a proverbial dead horse milkshake out of it. I’ll shut up now.

As a parent: thank you! :) No, seriously. Thanks. Sometimes we just didn’t know how fancy the restaurant was… just like, well, everybody else who sometimes finds out that a restaurant is fancier than they expected. And sometimes the service is slow to boot, and that’s when all hell breaks loose, and you can’t leave without paying, so you’re kind of stuck.

And I realized that my comment about telling parents that I don’t think children belong everywhere might sound like I’d mosey on over in a restaurant and say that. I wouldn’t. I don’t. I frankly have never had an experience in a restaurant so bad that I’d say something to a parent there and then, or leave, or whatever. I really want to make that clear – because I think saying something to a parent in that place at that time is insulting and designed to embarass, and I think that’s wrong at all costs.

I have, as I did here, generally commented both on message boards and amongst friends in casual environments (like the 4th of July picnic) that it mystifies me that we have a culture that is so child-oriented anymore that there are so few places (it seems) that adults go where children don’t. Obviously excepting bars – but not universally so, since, in some states, children may accompany parents where liquor is served if they don’t drink. I honestly don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying it’d be nice, sometimes, to have strictly adult discourse… even though I adore kids, and am one of those people who generally *volunteers* to sit at the kids’ table.

You, like the rest of us, have to live in a world with people whose company you do not enjoy, and whose bodies make your sensory stimuli less pleasant. This blog, however, does not have to give you the space to insult parents or perpetuate the oppressive notion that the only people who are entitled to be in a public space are people whose bodies behave according to a very narrow set of parameters, most of which are beholden to a really really fucked-up notion of “control” that hurts far more than just the childfree. let’s hope that you are never old, disabled, incontinent, or otherwise prone to ruffling the feathers of people who think it’s their God-given right never to have an unpleasant sensory experience any time they’re a paying customer. And let’s hope you never want to claim any kind of shared-common-good argument when you are the one who is more vulnerable, more needy, or more requiring of accommodation than *you* happen to be at this precise moment, which you seem to think is the requirement of all people at all times.

Seems to me you’ve been warned. Next comment where you denigrate children, children’s bodies, or all parents everywhere for not meeting your standards or having children for reasons you find personally persuasive enough to warrant your having to share a world with people you don’t one hundred percent enjoy, you’re banned.