Hall Of Mirrors

Dave spent a night in Arizona last week, so I took the kids out for dinner. We had sushi because we are a good yuppy family. We were seated in a tiny booth and the wall next to us was one giant mirror, and when Luke turned to say something to me he got distracted. "I thought there was a boy at a table next to us that looked just like me!" Luke likes to look at himself in the mirror. I give him the option of taking his time outs in his room or mine and he always picks mine. Recently, he was crying quite dramatically and Dave gave me the "What the heck?" look. I said, "Five bucks says he is standing in front of the mirror." Oh yeah, Dave, you owe me 5 bucks. But back to dinner. Soon he noticed there was a mirror on the other wall too. "I can see myself over there! And I can see six Lukes!" (Reflection of a reflection and so on.)

I didn't plan on the meal taking quite so long, but what with the mirrors and the chopsticks, and the looking at yourself in the mirror using chopsticks, it was quite the leisurely affair. And this meant that Jack wanted to eat, and yeah, I didn't bring his/my privacy blanket. No worry, the linen napkins were on the large side. So I was trying to feed Jack, and I had us covered with a linen napkin, and I looked in the mirror to my right and we were clear, and I looked in the mirror to my left and we were clear. I looked back to the right, and back to the left. Clear. I made eye contact with the waiter, and if he's able to make eye contact, then good, he's not seeing anything else. And I look down and make eye contact with Jack, who has stopped eating and casually tossed off the linen napkin. And I don't need to look in the mirror at the 6 copies of myself to see that I am exposing myself to the entire room. I covered Jack up and started over and the entire process was repeated about 3 times.

I am not the most modest person in the world, but I think all the mirrors did me in. Because the next day I was pumping in the lactation room and I heard someone talking really loudly, so loudly it seemed like they were in the room with me and I thought, "Oh. My. God. I forgot to shut the door. I am in the lactation room, pumping, and the door isn't even CLOSED!" But the door was closed. I think I was just delirious because it was late afternoon and all I had packed for lunch was Luke's leftover kid's meal, which was a tiny square of tofu and about 7 edamame, and I had eaten it at about 10:30. And someone was talking really loudly right outside the door.