Sick Baby on Board

The thing with babies is that you can't ever leave them alone, even when you want to. Again, I don't have kids, but that's what I've heard. Surely there are times when a parent secretly wishes that they could just put their baby in a crate, go out to dinner and then come home two hours later, give it some water and take it out for a walk. That seems to work great for my dog. Or maybe there are times when the baby wants to stay home but the parents drag it out anyway. This may have been the case last night when a couple had dinner with their horribly sick child. Looking at that baby's eyes, they seemed to be saying, "Bitch, I just wanna be at home with some Saltines, ginger ale, a National Enquirer and Oprah."

I was in my station at the front of the restaurant when my bossy co-worker (read all about him here) came to me and told me (not asked me...) to help clean up the milk that a baby spilled at table 21. Making my way to the spill zone, I saw another server in the dish room wiping down a high chair. The milk looked bumpy and slimy so I assumed it was some kind of nasty cheap ass baby formula that comes from Costco. The waiter was putting on rubber gloves. "That is some weird looking milk, right? I said. He replied. "Oh, it's not milk. The baby threw up all over everything." He began to clean it up as I slowly removed myself from the situation. I do not clean up vomit. (Unlike this super hero.) And then I wondered why the fuck Moe asked me to clean up the "milk" when he knew it was fucking baby puke. One more reason to dislike this guy.

Anhyoo, it was then that I caught my first look at the baby. It was now in pajamas because her clothes were covered in vomit and now in a plastic bag laying on the floor. Obviously, the mother knew this was possibility because she happened to have a pair of pj's in her diaper bag. The poor little baby looked miserable: watery eyes, a crusty snotty nose and a cough that sounded like it belonged to a senior citizen who smoked a pack of Pall Malls every day for the last 80 years. Once, I think I saw her cough up a piece of baby lung. She quickly ingested it again. It may have been a piece of the Caesar salad her mother was feeding her, but I will just go ahead and say I am 99% sure it was baby lung. Meanwhile, the parents continued having a gay old time while their baby continued to hold down vomit and cough up body parts.

They had a two-top open next to them that I refused to seat anyone at, because I know that nobody wants to sit next to a sick baby and a bag of clothes that smell like vomit. We have to do that on the 7 train pretty much every day so you would think we would be used to it, but we're not. The baby finally fell asleep (I hope it was asleep) allowing mom and dad to casually sip their coffee while Sick Baby drooled a puddle of mucus on to Mommy's shoulder. Eventually, they paid the check and went home. Or to the emergency pediatric wing at Elmhusrt Hospital. That baby was fucking sick. But at least Mom and Dad got to go out to eat on a Friday night and good for them. I don't get parents who can ignore the needs of their kids like that. Reminds me of a time I saw this woman at Blizzard Beach in Disney World. Her baby was asleep and she was carrying it around like a sack of potatoes. And someone told me once that I was selfish for not having kids? I don't think so.

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