Starbucks Drama: Mommy Laptop and the Entourage

Do whatever you want with your children - except abuse or eat them. But please control them in public. This is one of my pet peeves and I will harp on it with all the power of an aggrieved peasant supplicating the queen of England. PLEASE CONTROL YOUR HOWLER MONKEYS.

I'm already exhausted from battling traffic for the forty miles of bad road between Naples and Fort Myers when I hit the Starbucks for a quick coffee and a snack.

What awaits me OUTSIDE the door but a miniature version of Brett Favre? Minus the comebacks, of course. And the Super Bowl rings. But apparently with the arm.

Which he was all to happy to demonstrate by heaving a football into anything that stayed in one place long enough for him to target it for a pass downfield.

Display of holiday coffees. Touchdown. Five bags of coffee on the floor, one huffy barista.

Potted plant in the corner? Six points! Assorted shrubbery in tatters. More huffy baristas.

Big pail of coffee grounds? This was reserved for the spike at the END of the play - at which point everybody got the scent - and sight - of coffee grounds and the baristas got to practice their cleaning skills.

Where was mama? Apparently either working on her NaNoWriMo masterpiece about Lord Sheldon Shoveldrake and Lady Myrna Muddlepuck and the burning desire of that will soon ignite the barren moors overseen by Silverwind Hall. The passion. It burns in their hearts.

Obviously. It burnt in hers too at point, because there is a second howler monkey that belongs to her now playing in the left-behind coffee grounds. No one said these baristas were that good at sweeping.

Oh. This must be a Biblical sackcloth and ashes scene - the girl has her Barbie(TM) and is drizzling the coffee grounds in the hair! HAHAHAHA. She's also missing a shoe for some reason. The child, not the doll. Let me tell you. My cousin had about 40 Barbie dolls - and she never could keep them shod. Poor shoeless Barbies. Forced to wander barefoot through the snow, calling aimlessly for Ken, who was out with Skipper in that sweet Barbie convertible.

Anyway. Where was I? Oh. Mommy Writer. Who is banging away on her laptop - for which I congratulate her. Maybe she's running an eBay business? Maybe she's selling one of the kids into slavery? PLEASE?


But the kids are stinking up the joint. Brett Jr. is pitching the football everywhere. After throwing it at everything inside, including about three feet from my foot and getting a look that would melt brass - he retreats outside. Mommy Writer never looks up.

This is how Balloon Boy parents are created. Seriously. He's happily bouncing the football off the store doors without a care in the world while Sister Coffee Grounds is inside, now taking the Barbie that's got a full head of nappy coffee ground hair and smearing that all over the door.  That poor Starbucks Via girl. So abused. First no one wants to sample her, then no one wants to buy her - and now she's getting it from both sides.

And there's Mommy Writer, sitting there, typing away.

Wait, she's shutting down, apparently before the precious little angels get kidnapped. Fat chance. They'd get returned. With interest.

And here's the kicker.

Her wallpaper? OH MY GOD, THERE'S APPARENTLY ANOTHER ONE.

The wallpaper is her three howler monkeys in that classic "Three Wise Monkeys" pose. They're sitting on some hideously upholstered couch and posed with their hands doing the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" thing.

Well ... someone needs to rethink that. Not that her children are evil. They're not. Just mischevous. But really .....