Vegetable

Daily Newsie talked about a moment of hilarity that she witnessed today when a woman declared, while standing at a monkey exhibit, "This monkey's boring. We're going to McDonald's." This brought back a memory.

In the summer of 2003, I lived in southwest Florida while interning at a newspaper.

While in Florida, I met many wonderful people. One of the places we congregated at was a restaurant called Buffalo Chips. It had good wings and cheap drinks, and it was all-ages for those of us who weren't yet 21 and therefore couldn't go to a traditional bar.

One of the first nights we were there, several of us were sitting at a table directly in front of a family of four, parents and two young kids. This family appeared to be eating dinner. It was 11 p.m.

I did think it was a little weird that they had their very young children out eating dinner at 11 p.m., but Bonita has a lot of tourists, and it's possible they were on some weird vacation schedule.

While sitting there, my friend Arron and I overheard the mother loudly scold her child.

"Put down that celery and eat your dinner!"

Arron and I looked at each other and cracked up.

Heaven forbid the child have a vegetable.