A Family Dinner at the Olive Garden

Tonight we dined at the Olive Garden, which was lovely. We arrived and got on the waiting list. We stood by the door and looked at babies and crazy ladies in stretchy pants and giant tee shirts. The kids started to get restless and push each other and fight. They all got a slap upside the head. Skylar got mad and threw her sweatshirt over her head in anger. Bill started to get bored and aggrivate J by flopping all her hair in her face. She could only take so much and as I turned to see what the trouble was I saw it. All in slow motion. J, who was standing in front of Bill, reared her little arm back and elbowed him right in the parts. Bill gasped with a shocked and horrified look on his face. He had to fight all of his instincts not to pick her up by the head and shake her. Right as this was happening our buzzer went off and the hostess was coming straight at us. I couldn’t talk to her because I was was losing my mind with laughter.
We sat down and chowed on all you can eat salad and super garlicy bread sticks. You know sometimes you get the bread with hardly any garlic, oh no my friend not tonight. SUPER GARLIC!! We started to eat our dinner and Fallyn was sitting on her knees instead of her butt and all the sudden I see the chair jerk and a terrified and startled look on her face as her rolly chair slid backwards like she was on some crazy reverse roller coaster. Everyone was watching her and I started to laugh and she got really mad and embarrassed. I couldn’t stop laughing because I just kept seeing her face looking horrified. This enraged her and she threw her chicken strip in Bill’s sprite. This in turn mad him mad and she got her 2nd slap upside the head of the night. That did not go over well and Fallyn grabbed her plate and loudly moved over one spot at the table. I let her calm down for a few and then I asked her how her head was because a couple days earlier she tripped on the sidewalk and got a huge knot on her head. When I asked how her head was she started rubbing it and said very sadly “it hurts now because he just hit it”. This made me spit my bellini tea into my 5 cheese ziti.
I just saw everyone around us looking into our seemingly dysfunctional family and thought of the old Will Ferrell sketch of SNL when he would scream at family dinners that he is in middle management and drives a dodge stratus and then at the end of every dinner ends up throwing the whole table to the ground and screams “fuck this, im outta here!”
We finally got out of there and while we were walking to the car J tripped in the parking lot so hard that it knocked her shoe and half of her sock right off. I laughed all the way home.