Suffer the Little Children: A Rant

My neighbours are a very nice couple. Older. Professorial. Lovely. Childless. They moved to their summer house three weeks ago and rented their house to a visiting Chinese professor, his wife and their two kids (a very young baby and a 2-year old). I am not so happy with my neighbours now.

The baby cries all the time. This is summer so their windows are open. Our windows are open (as long as I am winning the no air conditioning argument with Husband). Our houses are kind of close together. When I lie in bed, or sit on my couch, it sound like the screaming baby is in the next room.

Their two year old is a little brat. Mom puts him in the backyard and then he stands there kicking the back metal screen door over and over and over and over (you get the drift).

Now, Husband and I have opted out of having children. Our reasons are many and varied. We own our own business and have responsibility for 45 people, many of whom are the sole breadwinners in their families. We work long and strange hours. We didn't want our relatives and day care to raise our children. I didn't want to end up a virtual single mother since any hours I don't work, Husband has to. I like my ankles just the way they are. We love to travel. We like to eat late. I have a low pain threshold and both of us have almost zero patience. We were both only children and didn't really grow up with kids around us. Kids scare me. I can't watch babies and toddlers eating because it makes me physically ill (weird, eh?). Between us we have exactly 158 reasons not to have kids. I know because we wrote them down when we were discussing our options years ago.

But now, this summer anyway, I feel like I have kids. I am woken up several times a night when the baby cries. I have to stretch my patience when the toddler goes off his head. I have to smell baby poo because the mother changes the baby outside right under my window and keeps an open diaper pail along the side of their house, 5 feet from my patio. But I can't complain.

It isn't the kids' fault. They're kids. It isn't the parents fault. Baby's cry. Kid's poo. Okay maybe the parents could deal with the temper tantrums 10 times a day. But it just isn't politically correct to storm over to your non-English speaking neighbours and scream at them because you're tired from lack of sleep. I could close my windows (and I generally do when it gets really bad), but why do I have to disrupt my life because I didn't have kids.

This recent development in my neighbourhood is just so typical of what seems to be happening all around me lately.

We own a kid friendly restaurant. And lots of our customers have really great kids (as long as I don't have to spend much time watching them eating). But there are some parents who I would just love to ban from our premises. So for them, I am providing them with the following set of rules:

1. My staff are not your baby sitters. Do not allow your children to run around the dining room floor while you enjoy your "adult" conversation. The servers are carrying hot plates, hot coffee, glass, china and knives. The room is filled with dangerous things for a kid. And I am sure that if your kid gets hurt it will somehow be my fault.
2. In a busy restaurant please order for your kids. It is really sweet that you want 2 year old Janey to order for herself 'cause it's just so damn cute. But your server has 9 other tables to get to and doesn't have time to spend 10 minutes having a discussion with a 2 year old who has a minimal grasp of the English language and can't read the menu.
3. I understand that kids get restless waiting for a table. But you don't get priority seating just because you chose to have 4 kids. The childless customers are no less important.
4. If your kid is having a screaming tantrum, for the love of all that is holy why can't you take them outside for 5 minutes. If your kid is screaming it is ruining the meals of 150 other people. I'll keep your food warm until you get back. I'll pour you a fresh coffee. Ignoring your kid just doesn't seem to be working our real well. I the 14 years we have owned our business I only saw a parent take a kid outside for 5 minutes once. Really. Once.
5. If your kid has a serious food allergy we are not going to serve him. I know that other restaurants accomodate you. They take "precautions". But I have worked in this business almost all my life and I can tell you that they make the smallest concessions possible. They would rather make a token effort and ensure the sale. I would rather err on the side of caution. I could guarantee you that your kid's food won't be in contact with any sesame seeds or sesame seed oil. But I'd be lying. I'd rather lose a customer than kill a kid.
6. If you are carrying a baby in one of those carrier/basket things please don't put your kid on the floor in an area where people have to walk. Not everybody watches the floor for babies.
7. If your kid makes an unusual mess like throwing cherios all over the floor and neighbouring tables, puking, chucking creamers on the floor, ripping up napkins, maybe you could at least offer to pick some stuff up off the floor when you are leaving. Or maybe I could just come over to your house later and destroy your living room. Then leave.
8. We don't have magic tables, chair, and walls. If your kid crayons and magic markers all over my furniture it's ruined. You wouldn't let your kid to this at home.
9. How come it is OK for your 5 year old to jam pennies in the pay phone thereby breaking it, but it isn't OK for me to ask you to stop them from doing it. When this happened and I nicely asked the mother to reign in her kid, she started yelling that it was none of my business, I had no right to tell her kid what he can and can't do and to but out. Um. Actually it is my business. Literally.
10. Finally, please don't allow sweet little Stewie to lean over the booth and talk to, spit on, drool on, and touch the nice childless couple eating their meal on the other side. Sometimes, believe it or not, the nice childless couple, aren't that enamoured with your kid. Particularly when little Stewie rubs his stickly little maple syruped fingers all over the nice man's Armani suit jacket. 'Cause guess who gets to pay that dry cleaning bill. Not mommy I can tell you that.

I don't hate kids. I even like some of them (except, of course, for that whole eating thing). And I understand that parents have a hard, stressful, demanding job raising and taking care of them. I know that a lot of parents are going to hate what they read here. But let me give you a hypothetical scenario before you roast me:

You are dining at a restaurant and there are 4 teenagers or young adults at the next table. These young adults are loud and rude. They are yelling at each other. They are throwing food on the floor and at each other. Periodically 2 of them get up and ride their skateboards around the dining room floor. One of them starts lightly poking you in the side of your head with a fork. Finally, one of them throws up on the floor next to you and then they all leave.

I welcome your comments.