The Reluctant Dinner-Goer

Last night, we had planned to have supper at an Indian restaurant.  This was a daring venture, since the children officially like Southeast Asian food, but have an almost reflexive hostility to the idea of Indian food, probably because Amy and I like it, coupled with The Curry Factor.

In any case, by the time we got to the parking lot of The Bollywood Grill, Daniel was fast asleep in the back seat of my car.  Since we were in two cars, and Amy thought Daniel badly needed the sleep, I took him home, and Amy, Madeleine and Ian had supper inside.  [Meanwhile, Amy thought I had decided not to go home after all, and was waiting for Daniel to wake up, and that I'd be in the restaurant eventually, so she ordered a dish for me and Daniel...]

Right on queue, as soon as I pulled into the driveway, Daniel woke up.  Amy had lined up Plan B, so I proposed to Daniel that we go buy an "Amy's Vegan Spinach Pizza" from the grocery store, so we did.  Of course, Daniel had all kinds of other ideas about things to buy, and we left with a candy baby-bottle and a bouncy rubber ball-on-a-sling-thing from the gumball machine.

So the Daniels had an evening of vegan, gluten-free pizza and Superhero cartoons, and eventually the rest of the brood came home.

Apparently Daniel got a chance to show Ian his acquisitions, because this morning, Ian asked me why I didn't buy him a few specified items - a Bok Choy Toy from the gumball machine, and some other Ian-preferred commodity.  I explained to him that Daniel had missed out on supper with the family, so I thought I might at least get him a thing or two while we were at the store.

At that point, Ian said something that really touched me.  I don't think it was a veiled expansion of the why-didn't-you-get-me-anything pitch; I think he really meant it.  He said that he hadn't intended to have supper without me, that he doesn't like Indian food, and that if he realized that I wasn't going to stay at the restaurant, he would have left with me.

But there's a silver lining:  Amy discovered Indian entrees that the children will eat, and Ian discovered that Tandoori chicken tastes like hot dogs.  I'm sure it's no coincidence...

(September 8, 2012)