Corrupting the Youth

This may lead to some lecturing, but I don’t care…feel free to tell me what a crappy parent I am. I may just have to break out the tried and true “Whatever, I am her sister, not her mother” defense.

I did one of my favorite things with the Munchkin last night: take her out with me. That’s right, my sister is 11 years old and in the fifth grade and she has two favorite bars and knows, I think, five bartenders or bouncers by name. In July she was thrown out of her first bar, and I was very proud.

Ok, that sounds a little bit worse than it is…lol. It started because she is a HUGE Chicago Cubs fan. I have no idea why…I think her father was a baseball fan and it rubbed off. We grew up more in White Sox territory than Cubs territory, but she somehow adopted the Cubs.

The problem being that the Cubs aren’t on TV in Boston more than once or twice a year. There is, however, a plethora of sports bars in the city, many of which have satellites and all kinds of programming. The week after I moved her out here, Smoking Hot Roommate suggested that we all go to one of them (it’s like a Chili’s or an Applebees, only not one of those…lol) and see if they would turn the game on for her.

Needless to say, if a super cute little girl and her hot older sister and her mega-hot older sister’s best friend ask a bartender to put someone on TV, he does. And thus started a regular Thursday tradition during the summer: chicken fingers and Cubs games (when they are playing). Occasionally if it is not crowded they will let her sit at the bar, but usually we just take a table in the bar and hang out. There are two regular bartenders there that she most definitely knows by name and that greet her by name and by ringing the bell when she shows up, which makes her all the more happy. Now, if they would just play the games earlier so she could watch more than the first couple innings…

Then there is a bar over on the waterfront that has a patio open in the summers (if you are a local, yes, it probably is the one you are thinking of…lol). We go there a lot in the summer so we can sit outside and eat, and since not that many kids are regulars, at least two of the waitresses know her by name as well.

Really, I never hesitate to take her anywhere. If I have her with me, it is almost certainly before 8:00 or so, which means that the places are not as crowded, not as loud and not as drunken. Even if they are 21+, she they usually let her in if it’s early enough…it is pretty clear that she is not gonna try and order drinks. And, Smoking Hot Roommate and Big Sis know EVERYONE, so they can usually have someone let us in.

Which I guess sounds kind of weird, now that I write it. But I like having her around, and she loves being included and being with me:-). So as long as my friends like having her around and make sure to keep the conversations PG-13, I don’t really see the harm in it. I know it is probably a little bit “different”, but we are different, so I guess it matches. She has fun and never wanders away from me or Big Sis or SHR, and she feels oh-so-sophisticated if she can get a Shirley Temple in a martini glass

Ahh, the getting thrown out of a bar…this is a funny one. Last summer The Body, The Mouth and a couple other friends came to visit for my birthday. We went out right after work on a Thursday night and had some dinner and were just hanging out shooting the shit and Munchkin was with us.

Well, we sort of lost track of time…we hadn’t seen them in a couple of months and we can get very chatty. Before we knew it, it was like 9:30 and the bouncer (who I know pretty well) came over and told me “AM, you know we love you guys, but you have to get her out of here.” I sort of felt bad that I made him tell us…I should have taken her home before then, but it does make for a funny story:-)

I bet you never got thrown out of a bar when you were 11…hee hee. I didn’t, but I did have to escort someone home who had been thrown out of bars a couple of times when I was that age. That is a whole other story.

Anyway, so even though the baseball season is over, I took her out to her favorite place for chicken fingers last night, and then we stopped and met up with The Boy and a couple of his friends – yes, including McBeal and Otter;-) – at a bar that was on our way home. So I had some alone time with the Munchkin, got to see The Boy for a bit and had the little one home by 8:00. That is actually a pretty good night in my book.