Yeah you.  The couple sitting two tables over from me at the Silver Lake Acapulco restaurant I was trying to have an enjoyable dinner in last night.

For the first twenty minutes, I heard the shrieking of a baby.  I mean the kind of shrieking that didn’t indicate hunger, but distress.  Pain.  Sickness.  Repeats of “Blues Clues.”

Why don’t they take that poor baby out of here, I kept thinking.  Then I looked up and saw to my shock that the caterwauling wasn’t coming from an infant, but from your kid, a child who was at least two, probably three years old.

And he wasn’t in pain, or sick, or in distress.  He was simply sitting between his mother and father and they weren’t paying attention to him.  Yep, this screaming, animal-in-pain noise was simply his way of announcing he was bored.

The parents then began taking turns occupying him. Picking him up, walking him around the restaurant.  Whenever they did, he turned off the sound instantly and was suddenly the happiest kid in the room.  Then the second Mom or Dad put him down, more screaming.

Which means that you two lousy parents have taught this little wretch that he can manipulate you any time he wants by turning the volume up to eleven.  And he’s learned he can do it for any reason, whether important or utterly frivolous.

Mom, Dad, you think it’s annoying right now that you have to pick the kid up to stop the siren?  Wait until he’s a little older and begins to come up with other ways to get your attention when you’re ignoring him.

You are not only inconveniencing anyone unfortunate enough to come with a ZIP code of your family, but you are raising a future dysfunctional, ugly, narcissistic adult.

Like we don’t have enough of those already.