Saturday Night Special

Saturday night  is Husbandrinka’s turn to cook which means that at 7 pm I’m starving and he’s saying things like “any ideas about dinner?”  Needless to say I am too weak to answer so I just shoo the flies away from landing on my lip.

“Why don’t we go out to eat?” he suggests after checking the “already made, just needs heating” section of our refrigerator and not coming up with a damn thing.

“YES!” Young Ladrinka shouts and then chants Vapiano! Vapiano! which, in my opinion, is a restaurant in name only. It’s not that the food isn’t good, except that is the reason exactly. But they make a pizza in animal shapes and that apparently passes for gourmet in kid world.

As a famine victim, however, I can’t really argue, so it’s a plan.

And in a few moments, Husbanrinka, Young Ladrinka and I are all ready, and I go into my daughter’s room to see what the holdup is and it seems to be the fact that she’s painting her toenails. Yes, a pre-dinner pedicure, because why not?

I explain to her in a few well chosen explicatives why this isn’t Prime Pedicure Time and we finally all walk out the door and as we’re heading towards the “restaurant” we notice that all traffic on our street is stopped and that there appear to be undercover police offers who have one person up against the car, and another on the ground near the car and it’s all very OMG! and there are a kazillion (or maybe 7) people gathered around looking at what’s going on and asking each other what happened and no one knows anything.

So of course we all want to stay and see what unfolds, except when I say “we all” I need to exclude my son because he’s very “they’re criminals, let’s get out of here!” And although I try to explain about the presumption of innocence that attaches to everyone who enters the criminal justice system, he doesn’t seem very open-minded constitutionally speaking, so just a heads up, you may not want him on your jury, if you get my drift.

And then we see police cars with lights blaring driving up the wrong way on Fifth Avenue to get to our crime scene and my son is all “let’s just go to dinner” like he can’t wait to get the hell out of there and my daughter is more tolerant with the announcement of “Omg, I love crime!”

“You love crime?” I ask. Because this is certainly a fun development in any parent’s life.  Sure, many parents try to instill a love of crime from an early age, but to just have it happen so organically is beyond what most parents dare dream about.

“Yes!” she’s obviously in her element, inching closer to the undercover cops and the action.

We finally left, but not before Husbandrinka and I agreed that the undercover cops looked like teenagers  (and incidentally ones that you wouldn’t want to sit next to on the subway, their disguises were that good!) and over dinner, after being Mirandized, our daughter explained that when she declared her commitment to a life of crime, she meant forensic science because it’s the most interesting aspect of science for her.

So that’s certainly a relief.

Or a reminder of why no one should leave their house ever. Either one.

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One year ago ...

• Fight - 2011