State of the Banana

I reread my Raison d’etre for starting the Dining with Monkeys blog yesterday, and I realized that I started out with one goal and ended up with another.

To quote myself, “I want to review restaurants in order to guide people toward a place that will provide them with good food and good service for a reasonable price. But not just any people. People with kids.” This is still true, but it isn't what keeps me going out to eat and then coming back here to talk about it day after day.

I used to get really uptight when I took the monkeys out to eat. In fact, I really tried to avoid it at all costs. If a friend called and asked if the monkeys and I wanted to meet her and her monkeys at a restaurant, I would actually get a little annoyed. “You know that isn’t fun for me,” I’d whine before trying to convince her to order a pizza and invite us over to her house instead.

My previous uptightness mostly revolved around my fear of losing control of the monkeys before the meal was over. I still have this fear, but it is mitigated by the fact that if I do lose control of the monkeys, I can write about it. By writing about it, I can hopefully encourage someone else who might be uptight about going out to a restaurant to go ahead and do it. I mean, the antics that most people’s monkeys engage in probably pale in comparison to mine.

When I take the monkeys out and they act like, well, monkeys, I like to think of it as a community service of sorts. We are breaking in waiters across the city so that others don’t have to! Parents throughout Memphis may dine smug in the knowledge that their kids are not the most feared monkeys in town. Mine are!

I am totally looking forward to the day that I am a famous restaurant reviewer and everyone in every restaurant everywhere knows me and my monkeys. Think of the service we’ll get! And the free meals!

Yeah, right.

The real reward of Dining with Monkeys is being able to enjoy eating out again.