Not In My Restaurant
So, back in high school one of my closest friends got pregnant and gave birth to the sweetest baby boy. She stopped going to school for a while to take care of her kid, but still did online school so she could graduate with her class. One thing we would do is go to one of the local food places near the high school on Fridays. On this particular day, we decided to go to this nice Chinese place that I frequent regularly.
The little old Asian lady knows me by name. This Chinese place has a sticker on the front door that says something like “Breastfeeding will always be allowed,” which is great since that’s what my friend is more comfortable doing for her baby. After we ordered our food, we hung out in this little waiting area when the baby gets all fussy.
She takes out the little cover and covers her baby and her chest as she starts to feed him. We keep talking until this woman and her son, who had to be around 10, comes in. I recognize the kid as one of the kids I looked after when I use to volunteer at a youth center. He comes up to me and starts talking to me, and then asks my friend what she’s doing with the baby.
Before my friend could answer, the boy’s mother cuts in. “A disgusting thing is what she’s doing. Don’t you know better than to do that in public? And why are you even doing that if you’re only a kid?” My friend has an attitude sometimes, so I try to jump in before she would start to throw things. “It’s not disgusting, and the owner, Mrs. L is fine with it. She has a sticker on the door”.
Mrs. L was just ogling the baby a second ago. She smiles at us and continues to write some stuff down. The mother wasn’t happy about this and continues with her rant. “I’m sorry but I’m just not okay with a baby breastfeeding another baby. Can you please just stop,” she says in frustration. Mrs. L finally cuts in and in her broken English, she says, “Nursing baby is a beautiful thing. You have problem, you leave”.
She then taps the order on the window that leads to the kitchen and apologizes to my friend for the woman’s nasty behavior. She then looks at the boy who is still next to me and says jokingly, “Your mother, she dummy right?” This makes the boy laugh and the mother just grumble in her seat, trying to stay as far from us as she could.
When my friend finished and we grabbed our food, Mrs. L threw in an extra order of egg rolls, since they were my friend’s favorite.