TV Dinner

I'm sitting in a nice restaurant called the Banana Leaf in Vancouver, eating my green-bean stir fry with rice tonight and I look to the family that has just sat down adjacent. A mother, a father, a daughter, a son... but wait. There's something else. Between the two children is an iPad and playing on the iPad is the Incredibles.

When I was young, no such thing existed. If my parents were nice enough to take my sister and I for dinner (usually to the town's Chinese restaurant) we sat quietly, drew animals with wax crayons, and ate our dinner. If we were too hyper to sit quietly, mom and Dad would play games with us or we'd be required to bring our favourite book and read.

Twice in the past month have I been sitting at a restaurant and then, low and behold, a child comes in with his/her family and begins playing on whatever sort of new technological device she/he has with them. It angers me. Partly because I wonder if it's the parents who have consciously decided it's just easier to plunk a movie down in front of their children then it is to converse with them?

In all seriousness, to those people who are parents out there, PLEASE do not become like this. Challenge your children, teach them that dinner time is family time and not time to watch another Disney flick. It's quite despicable, in my very honest opinion.