Funny Guy Friday... Only cool people eat out this late...

     Funny Guy Friday is written each week by my husband, Mark. So, I married a Funny Guy!
     Last Friday, I got home from work around 6 p.m. and Cheryl had nothing planned for dinner. I thought it would be a nice idea for us to go get a quick bite to eat and start our Christmas shopping. These days, we can do these things on the spur of the moment because we have a built-in fifteen-year-old babysitter---an indentured servant, if you will.
     We announced our plan to get a quick bite to eat and then do some shopping. The dinner part was met with great enthusiasm from our kids who asked where we were going? They were not too keen on the shopping and wanted to cut that part out. Whoa, slow down there cowpokes, you three are not included in we. 
     Somehow, our going out on a date is not fair to our kids. They were offended at the idea and suggested that they don't ever get to do anything. This is funny because I think that they get to do everything. They go everywhere with us, unless they have a better offer from a friend; and if we go somewhere while they are at a friend's house, they complain because it is not fair that we do fun stuff every time they go over a friend's house. Cheryl and I have this sinister plan where we wait for one of the kids to get an invite to a friend's house and then we plan fun stuff with the remaining children. To maximize the missing child's disappointment, we encourage the remaining two kids to have extra fun to add to the missing sibling's heartbreak. It is a wickedly evil plot and in my humble opinion, it is just good parenting.
     Anyway, as we were leaving to go on our date, Grace was extremely vocal with her concerns. It appears that she thinks, and I quote....that ever since you two went to your reunion and found out that you used to be cool and now are all popular, you want to go out with each other all the time. You know, I think that she is on to something. We are like Fonzie cool! Our new found coolness is awesome, and we can't be seen out in public with our three children. What would the gang at the malt shop think if we showed up with them? Clearly kids reduce one's coolness factor.
     In response to her comments, Cheryl and I made out right there in our front hallway for all of our kids to see. I may even have raised my leg and wrapped it around Cheryl's waist to emphasize my ever increasing love for my very happening wife. We even danced with each other like we used to dance back in our high school days....you know back when we were cool and didn't know it. Now that we know, we can't let it go to waste and we must spend as much time with each other as possible. When I complained that I may have injured my neck sometime during the make-out session, Grace disgustingly said that there was no way that I was ever cool. Clearly, she was not at our reunion.
     So at 7:30, Cheryl and I left our house feeling pretty good about ourselves. How cool is it that we started our date so late? Only cool people eat out at that late hour. We would be able to skip right in, grab a beer and a burger, and scoot on out.
     The first place we went had a forty-five minute wait. The second place was a thirty-five minute wait, and the third place was a thirty minute wait. At this point I was getting tired, hungry and a bit irritated. After a fourth restaurant made us wait, I thought to myself, who knew that people ate dinner so late? Apparently, there are a lot of cool people out there... but they could never be as popular as we. We ain't waiting for you; you will wait for us!!!
     Our fifth choice, which used to be a regular stop back when we were sans children, was nearly empty. We stopped going there years ago for the Yogi Berra reason that "everybody stopped going there because it was too crowded." Now nobody goes there because they just don't go there anymore. Perhaps it is because we stopped going there.
     As we sat down, I reminded Cheryl that we still had to Christmas shop. She responded that she wanted to make a list and really did not feel like shopping before she knew exactly what we needed to buy. We don't need no stinking list, let's get going---remember who we are!
     She got out a pad of paper and a pen, and decided to make her list. She got as far as listing the people that we need to buy for---I just wanted to shop for my three kids. That is as far as she made it with her silly list---she wrote down the names of people for whom we need to buy gifts. There were about 40 people on the list. Being this popular is getting expensive. I got bummed out and resigned myself that we were not going to actually shop at all. We finished dinner and headed home.
     So, I injured my neck kissing my wife. The two of us got rejected by four separate restaurants. Our date consisted of making a list of people we know for whom we will spend money... in an old restaurant... where nobody goes. And then we headed home.
     Wow, it turns out that we may not be as cool as advertised. But please don't tell my kids, what they don't know won't hurt them. By the way... I haven't kissed my wife in a week. My neck is feeling much better.