Tonight Joe's Crab Shack had a special event where a percentage of your bill would go towards Autism Speaks. We usually go to Sonic on Wednesday nights because they have Wacky Pack Wednesday where all the kids meals are only $1.99. Whoo Hooo! So today when my wonderful husband asked if I wanted to go to Joe's I thought he was asking me out on a date. Nope, turns out he wanted to support Autism. I was happy to do that too.
So we load up the kids and head to Joe's. To be honest this was a bit out of our comfort zone as we usually try to stick with fast food or buffets since Z has a hard time understanding why, when he tells the waiter he wants macaroni and cheese, it takes so long to actually get the stuff, but we were open to giving it a try. So armed with ipads (Z), nintendo 3ds'(J), and nerves of steele (Me), we entered Joe's.
At first it wasn't so bad. There were relatively few people there and it was pretty quiet. They seated us at a table which made me wonder for a second if we should ask to be moved to a booth for better Z containment but our waiter had already left so we decided to stick it out. Z loved the decorations and wanted to run around a touch the 5ft fish, spin around on the swivel chairs in the bar (did you know you are not allowed to sit in on a swivel bar stool if you are under 21? I think that is silly considering that if you are drinking your chances of falling off a swivel stool are much higher than if you are sober and most kids want to sit in the swivel chairs and they are under 21. I really think they should rethink that idea, but I digress). For the most part we did ok, Z ordered macaroni and cheese, J got calamari and french fries and Brandon and I got various types of shrimp.
Z tired quickly of the restaurant when he discovered his needing to wait until age 21 to partake of the swivel chairs so he began to ask loudly for the macaroni and cheese. We kept explaining to him they were cooking it and to be patient. He actually did really good with the exception of the time where he wanted to check out the bucket of food of the older, single, male, diner at the table next to us. I saw Z head towards the bucket and my first thought was "oh please grab him before he beheads a lobster", my second on was "please don't let Z start playing with the lobster". Luckily he just wanted to see what was in the bucket and Brandon managed to pull him back to our table. Whew, crisis averted.
A little while later our food arrived. Poor Z took one look at the soupy macaroni and cheese and pushed it away. Oh shoot, crisis mode. I quickly turned to the waiter and asked him to immediately put in chicken strips for Z. He was such a sweetie and was so good about doing that. I was fine paying for two kids meals I just wanted poor Z to get something to eat, bless his baby heart. The ipad was keeping his occupied at this time and not too long later they brought out his chicken fingers which he quickly ate with abandon.
After finishing his chicken Z was done and so was I so I took him to the car while Brandon and J waited for the bill and got some of our leftovers to go. Brandon came to the car where I waited to hear what our final bill was. Brandon looked at me with moist eyes and told me there was no bill. The older, single, gentleman who had almost had his food inspected/eaten/played with my Z bought our dinner for us. I was floored. The waterworks started and I was totally amazed. We had just been to camp last week and talked about how many times we get so much unwanted, negative attention and here we were at a place where the man could have been annoyed, irritated, and angry at Z's interference with his dinner and instead paid for our family to eat out.
It was an amazing experience.
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