The older of the grandlads is a brat.
There, I've said it and I'm glad.
Der B and I spent the day grandladding again. I'm not going to go through the entire litany of what went wrong, because it's one of those little-things-piling-up stories that just sound grumpy and boring. Let's just say that William, the younger, and I were having a lot of fun after we picked him up from school. From the moment we picked up Alex, who gets out a few hours later, it was one demand or snotty remark or piece of attitude after another.
We went to have dinner with the two and their mother at a fairly nice restaurant late in the afternoon. Not fancy, but nice. William was fairly well behaved, Alex was not, yelling to interrupt conversations, raising a fuss about his food not being the exact same as he expected, sassing his mother. Finally he needed to go to the bathroom...so I went with him.
After waiting for him to finish for about ten minutes, while my food was getting cold, I decided I'd had enough, and very firmly told him how he was embarrasing his grandfather and myself, and his mother as well. You've heard the saying "His bark is worse than his bite?" If you've ever heard me growl, you don't want to find out what my bite is like. Alex had never heard me growl before.
While we were still in the restroom, Alex was still acting like he was king of the world. But when we got back to the table, after about a minute, he apologized to his mother. I later took her aside and explained what had happened. "You didn't hit him, did you?" she asked. I told her I hadn't, and wouldn't. She seemed impressed.
Der B and I listened to a CD of old Broadway recordings, a compilation from the Smithsonian, on the way home. It was restful after that restaurant experience.
