Dim Light Can Play Tricks on the Eyes

Rather than explain to a four-year-old why her parents, (actually only her mother), might like to go out to dinner once in a blue moon sans children, the humans took the easy way out and included the entire family in their anniversary dinner plans.

Left to mom, she would’ve white-lied and told the kids that they were going out to a work-related meeting, but since dad believes in full disclosure, the family of six piled in two separate cars (men in one, women in the other) and headed to a swanky Italian restaurant for dinner.

The few odd patrons at the dimly-lit restaurant consisted solely of lingering couples, so the hostess, anticipating brattish behavior from the kids set, placed the humans in a tenebrous private room - well away from the other diners.

Mom struggled to read the menu in near darkness, periodically stopping Kuki from blowing out the tea light at their table – their strongest source of light. She contemplated suggesting to management that perhaps they ought to print the menu in Braille.

The mood lighting afforded the perfect opportunity to play footsie under the table, but that would have been too much to expect from a man whose only anniversary acknowledgement had been to send mom a terse e-mail asking, “Do you want to go out to dinner? (EOM)" in the subject line.

By the time their pastas arrived (all the way from Italy, no doubt, judging by the time it took to process the order), mom had worked her way through her second loaf of bread and had trained her right ear to eavesdrop on the conversation at the wait station. In between listening to Kuki’s banter with her left ear, she learned that the manager’s wife suffered from poor body image issues.

She’s not the only one, sighed mom, conscious, with every mouthful, of the strain of her own stomach against her snug pants. With a heavy heart, she refused the crème brûlée and sucked on an ice cube instead.

On the way to the exit, as she helped Kuki reach for a mint at the hostess station, a stranger standing by the door asked mom, “Hey, don’t you live on Wildwood?”

"No," replied mom, sniffing suspiciously.

“I’m sorry," he said. "You look like my neighbor.”

Only in the parking lot did mom realize that the man had probably mistaken her for her supra-sexy, long-limbed, should-have-been-a-model friend, Gauri, who lives in the man’s neighborhood.

What joy! To be confused with such a paragon of the female form!

Mom had to be physically restrained from reentering the premises, grabbing the man by his lapels and breathlessly rasping, “Tell me more ….”

Not once did the thought of the dim lighting in the restaurant even cross her mind.