The First Scientific Study

The first study that all scientists embark upon in their lifetime is the study of gravity. Actually, this is a study not limited to scientists.

Sitting on a booster seat at a restaurant table, because he refuses a high chair, my one-and-a-half-year-old son reaches across to the quesadilla and fries we've ordered for him. His little hand scoops a small pile of fries onto the table; then, from the table into his booster seat; he watches disconnectedly, emotionlessly, as he reaches down into his lap now and pushes the fries off the booster seat - is it my imagination that they hang there midair for a moment - and they fall to the restaurant floor, onto the heap of his previous experiments. Giving only a second's attention to the result of his experiment, he looks back up to his plate, grabs another handful, and repeats the experiment; the results are the same. Again and again, fries fall from the sky to land on the growing pile with a wet "plappity-plop," until all that remains is the barely touched quesadilla. Will it fall too? Will air resistance cause it to flutter down gently as a feather? The young professor gives these questions only a moment's thought before grabbing the whole quesadilla, reaching under the table with it and letting it fall, as quickly as any fry, to envelope the heap below.

I watch all this in embarrassment at the mess they will find when they bus our table. I try and stop it, but, "scientific progress must march on," he rebukes me, as he grabs his next handful. Now with nothing left, he quickly loses patience with this whole dinnertime affair. I grab up handfuls of his Mexican dinner detritus from the floor, which he immediately tries to brush down again; we push his plate out of his reach, and I stare forlornly at the quesadilla first denied me out of duty to my diet, now denied me out of a fear of the germs it has collected from the floor.

Looking across the table at the work of art that my three-year-old created earlier in the meal using a package of "Equal" that he managed to open shortly before dipping his bean-covered tortilla chips in his glass of water, my wife and I come to the same conclusion: these kids need to learn some manners. It is a relatively rare thing when we go out to eat at a restaurant, and it shows in the variety of "games" and amusements that our children use to entertain themselves throughout the meal. We feel so guilty for the mess that they make that we occasionally pay a hefty tip to compensate, to say to the bus boy, "yes, we know that there is salsa on the table, on the booster seat, on the chair, on the floor, maybe on the ceiling, too, and we are duly embarrassed. Here's some cash; keep it quiet. We won't be back for awhile."

That evening, Amy bought various restaurant paraphenalia at the store: placemats, a butter dish that she upturned to hold little packets of Wal-mart's substitute for Equal (a substitute sugar substitute), a salt shaker, and a pepper shaker (both common art media at the restaurant table). Our meals will now be eaten with these temptations close at hand, as our children learn to deny such temptations. Someday, we hope to have a restaurant meal that doesn't leave us mumbling our thanks and goodbyes to the restaurant staff from our downcast heads as we quickly parade past patrons to make our escape from our dining-out hell.