"No Pope, No Pope"

So, my folks took my entire family to Buca de Beppo for dinner to celebrate my birthday which God also celebrated by sending 15.5 inches of rain to Atlanta in 24 hours. On our way to the restaurant, in addition to discussing which of us knew how big a cubit was should we need to start building, we also wondered aloud if there would be a lot of other waterlogged diners in the restaurant and, if so, how long would the wait be given the birthday Queen, otherwise known as the stellar mother of two outstanding children, is not know to be a terribly patient person when hungry. Or fully fed, take your pick. But, in fact, due to the rain gods, there were no other diners. Nada, Nessun, Keine. Now, I must assume that this was the result of most road transportation that day being via barge and not due to any advance warnings being posted that our party, to include the son and daughter,would not only be in the area but also in the building. However, I did not personally observe the traffic management signs on the freeway that day so who knows. Word could have gotten out.

So, we had the entire wait, cook, bar and valet staff at our disposal. And, we got a great table with great food. But one of us refused to cooperate as it is against some personal policy of hers to actually sit in a chair and/or booth to eat. Ever. Apparently, she subscribes to the belief that one must actually jump up to get food to go down versus just swallowing it. So, she was enthusiastically launching herself in the air repeatedly and rebounding off the booth while working on a spaghetti noodle. Despite my whispered threats of the dreaded "time out" she carried on. And on, and on and on. So, with my normal copious limit of patience worn out, I made the executive decision that it was time for time-out and since it was my birthday, and I still had food to eat, it wasn't appropriate for me to just disappear and take my time-out with a good book. Nope, had to take the human spring with me and in good parental fashion put her in a chair, explain the situation and what she needed to correct and so on. Yep, time out by the book. And that is what I started to do when opportunity presented itself and when opportunity knocks, by gosh, I answer.

Like a miracle, the Pope intervened. We had walked into his special room at Buca where they keep the Pope's head and torso in a box on a lazy Susan at a table designed to sit King Arthur's court. Have to love it. Now, my understanding is that it isn't the actual head and torso of the last great Pope as the chain obviously had a bit of drama with Rome trying to get the real one and went the easier route with a fake but it is a reasonably good facsimile in dim lighting, after drinking or if you are almost three and you haven't seen the real deal.

So, I pointed him out to Mia and told him that he was God's right hand man. And, if one had some behavioral issues, he could and would smite them if they didn't settle down. Now, I know this might not be theologically correct and I might have some explaining to do to the big guy upstairs but, what the heck, it is still quite effective, especially if one shakes the table back and forth to get the Pope to move a bit. Yep, looks pretty good. So, I explained to the daughter that she might want to apologize to the guy for jumping in his house and promise not to do it again given his smiting powers and all. But, the daughter isn't actually open to suggestions for improvement during those hours she is fully awake and/or half awake and continued to let me know how she disagreed with my proposition.

And then the miracle occurred. I could hear the harps and bells as the daughter stopped objecting and began looking at the Pope with what was clearly a sign of reverence. She gazed at the Pope with a look that I could best describe as awe tinged with slight wariness. I was congratulating myself on a job well done and a game well played when it happened and, no doubt about it, it was a sight to behold. The daughter slowly leaned down, lifted the tablecloth and looked under the table. Twice. Slowly. As she lifted her little face up to me for an explanation, I explained his legs were apparently in the next room but since he was Pope, he didn't really need them anyway given his ownership of the only Popemobile in the world. But, as she is only familiar with Barbiemobiles, she apparently didn't quite get the Popemobile reference. The disciplinary miracle continued as she quickly demonstrated to me that she no longer felt the need to jump and, in fact, wanted to return to the party with all due haste and did not, under any circumstances, want to invite the Pope along.

We returned from wence we came and continued our celebration. And, it was clearly a lesson learned as was demonstrated when I gave her a quizzical look when she was considering jumping to celebrate cake eating. She looked right back at me and then was quite clear and unambiguous in her declaration, "No Pope, no Pope, no Pope."

And, this good parenting lesson stuck. The next day, she told Cody, the mentally challenged cat, that he would "go to Pope, go to Pope" if he didn't get off the counter. He didn't. However, from what I can tell, he isn't Catholic and just didn't care.