"How Dare You Criticize My Child in The New York Times!"

Soon to be a Hallmark Holiday Movie

Photo by Austin Pacheco on Unsplash

I like to think of myself as a tolerant person, but one thing I cannot take is kids going wild in a restaurant while the parents do nothing.

They’re yours, I think. Rope them to the chair, slip them a Xanax,  throw a tablecloth over their heads, do whatever it takes to rein them in.

Criticizing someone’s darling, however, is dangerous business, as this tale, set in the not-so-distant past, will soon make clear.

Uber, get me a Wayback machine! With a bar. I’ll need some liquid courage to relive this one.

It’s Greenwich Village, in the autumn of 2016. My friend Herb and I are having dinner at our local; a very nice restaurant called the Knickerbocker, where you have to remind yourself that your mortgage is paid off before you order the T-bone. I am writing a column for the New York Times, but it is not like I am Maureen Dowd. My presence excites no one.

Herb and I are seated near two women, who appear to be a mother and her younger friend, and her children; two boys, who look about six and seven, and a girl, who looks like she is three or four.  The girl, a perfect child who will no doubt grow up to be a newspaper columnist, is quietly engaged with her coloring book, but the boys are running around their table, yelling. One, who I take to be a future tech bro and shall call Elon, takes a moment as he runs around to torment his sister. 

I know the maître d’, a somewhat melancholy guy named Charles. I am waiting for him to do something, but after looking mournfully at this scene and deciding that it lines up exactly with his expectations of life, Charles cedes the territory and goes outside to grab a smoke.

 I, however, have been watching this scene for most of dinner and am doing a slow burn.

I also happen to have a Defender of the People complex. I wish I didn’t, but if you’ve seen Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde you know how it is with alternate personalities: one minute you’re a responsible doctor, engaged to a lovely girl, the next minute you’re standing over a woman’s dead body with a knife in your hand, thinking, “Oh, what the hell, she had an annoying laugh.”

Which is why I find myself at the hoodlum table, addressing Mom. 

“You don’t seem to be aware of this,” I say, “But for the last 20 minutes your kids have been annoying the entire restaurant.”

Now, here is where it gets weird. This woman doesn’t tell me to piss off or that I am obviously not a mother, because no man would have me, as any normal New York mother would.  She makes a request.

“Could you tell that to Elon?” she says.

Then, turning to her son, “Elon, this lady has something to say to you.”

What? Now I have to be the enforcer? How did this happen? The Defender of the People cannot even raise a plant. I have no idea what to say to a kid.

Elon, meanwhile, is standing there, sneering.

“Elon,” I say, as sternly as I can, “You’ve been running around, yelling, bothering everybody in here. A restaurant is not a playground. You’re disturbing people.”

Elon doesn’t bat an eye.

Threat, threat, what can I say as a threat? Something dramatic and scary. But memorable, like Conan the Barbarian. I will destroy your Gameboy and hear the lamentations of your nanny.

 “If you want to be in an adult restaurant, act like an adult,” I say. “Otherwise, don’t come here.”

That brings the little punk to heel. A tear appears in the corner of Elon’s eye and he apologizes, first to his mother, then to me. The restaurant explodes with the cheers of grateful diners, who toss roses at me and insist on sending over dessert.

Okay, that doesn’t happen. Nobody notices, not even Herb, who has hot-footed it outside to hang with the maître d’ the minute he sees what I’m doing.  Being Defender of the People is a lonely business; it’s not like there is a loyal manservant waiting for me when I get home to the Defender Cave, I have to paw through the kitchen cabinets myself, thinking, “Where did I hide those Pepperidge Farm Milanos?”

There is one upside to the evening: The worse a situation is, the better story it makes. I devote my next column to this awful interlude. About a week later, Herb and I are at the Knickerbocker, happily working our way through our savings, when a man I have never seen marches over.

“Are you Joyce Wadler?” he asks.

I have never been recognized by a stranger. I am thrilled.

“A fan,” I think. “Approach, my liege. No, do not tremble. I am but human, although reading my raw copy editors have been known to fall to their knees and sing, ‘Hosanna, she is come!”

Alas, my assessment is somewhat off. The man is furious.

“You wrote a story in The New York Times about my children and I want you to know my children do not behave like that,” he says.

Herb, who hates confrontations, amazes me by jumping in.

“Yeah? Well, I was there and I can tell you that they did,” Herb says.  

Meanwhile, a woman — the very one who asked me to speak to her son — materializes, accompanied by the punk himself,

“Look, Elon,” the mother says. “This is the woman who wrote about you in The New York Times.”

A seven-year-old kid is reading the Styles section of The New York Times? Yeah, right. The only way that kid saw that story is if his parents shoved it into his face.

Wham! Bam! The brilliant barbs Herb and I throw out at these arrogant interlopers!

That’s another lie. I like to think Herb and I held up our end, but the only other thing I remember about that night is wondering if I could get another column out of it. Also, the father might been a lawyer.

Anyway, fall turns to winter, and I return to my madcap dating site flirtations with age-appropriate bots. Sometimes I Google, “How many years can you go without sex before it kills you?”

Then, in early December, around Chanukah, I hear of a latke and vodka party at my neighborhood synagogue, The Village Temple.

Now, here is a fine way to meet men who are not robots, I think. And if not, there’s always the vodka.

I am an atheist, but there are times my hair looks so good I believe in a greater power, and latke and vodka night is one of them. Also, my weight is down and I am wearing an Eileen Fisher velvet jacket, that, not to go anthropomorphic on you, is just begging for it.

“Touch me, stroke me. I don’t suppose you know any sexy, leather bomber jackets?”

Hot to trot am I, though it quickly becomes apparent The Village Temple is not the place to get lucky. Vodka and latke night skews heavily to families, with gay dads making up a large component. There’s also too much praying for my taste.  Eventually, however, it’s vodka time. And, as befitting a night when we are celebrating miracles, I spot an age-appropriate, good-looking man and he spots me.

The man heads directly for me and, vodka warmed and uplifted, I sense the star-crossed coming together of two households, alike in dignity.

 Then he speaks.

“Aren’t you the writer from The New York Times?” he says, and then, to a woman who appears beside him. “This is the woman who wrote that story about Elon in the Times.”

Oy, fucking vey. Of all the latke and vodka parties in all the shuls in all the world, I have to walk into this one.  But for some reason – shared blood, perhaps, dating back to a hot night in the tent of Sarah and Abraham 5,000 years ago, or, more likely, vodka-infused brotherhood – we all laugh.

Then the father of the hoodlum children and I, if you can believe it, hug.

It’s amazing, really: Reporter and subject put differences aside and, in the spirit of the season, embrace. The Columbia Journalism Review was desperate to write it up, but I turned them down, sensing that I would one day need a story with a Jewish holiday peg myself.  And, oh goodness, look what time of year it is!

To all those who can spell it, Happy Chanukah!

Now, would you please get those kids out of here?