I am SO old fashioned. And I like it.

The girl was feeling better this weekend so we had a Girls' Day Adventure yesterday. Little mother/daughter bonding thing. We had a great time. Saw a show, went shopping, had dinner....Let me tell you about dinner. We went to Olive Garden, which is by no means "fancy" but a little more difficult for a 3 year old then, say, McDonald's. After being seated for about 20 minutes, as we were finishing our salad, it occurred to me that my daughter was (except for me, of course) the best behaved person in our area. By "behaved" I mean good manners (does anyone else remember those?) and by "person" I mean person, not child. To my left was the table with two couples; the women taking turns making calls on their cell phones. In front of me was a family; the children taking turns laying under their mother's chair. She alternated between ignoring this and making a big yelling production out of it. To my right was another, smaller family. A couple and their daughter, who looked to be in the 6-8 yr age....who spent the entire meal with a portable dvd player on the table watching a movie. Swear to God. And this table was right next to ours, with only one of those partial height walls and a fern seperating me and this girl's movie. I'm the kind of mom that insists on a family dinner every night. I don't care if we are only having take-out or popping a frozen pizza in the oven or if little Suzie Q is only 2 days old. I believe in having a sit down family dinner. We use napkins, we say "will you please pass me?", my kids ask to be excused. I've often felt frustrated trying to insist that a 2 yr old actually stay in his/her seat or that they use a fork instead of their fingers. Yesterday, was payback - it was worth every effort. And I was never more proud of my little girl. Napkin in lap, pulled up to the table, she ordered her own dinner. She said 'please' and 'thank you' to the waitress and we had polite conversation. We talked about the show we had just seen, the things around us, and where we would go shopping next. We may be a society of technological advances but I believe some of these advances are leading to our society's downfall. It is difficult to have "a sense of common identity" or "a rational relationship" with someone who is on a cell phone or watching television 24/7. We actually seem to be becoming a nation that will avoid human contact at all cost. Any one else remember singing songs on a long car trip rather then pulling out the headphones and movies and ignoring each other for the next 2 hours? Remember talking to your dinner companion? Talking to your kids? And don't even try pulling out the "educational" card because it won't work with me. I don't care if that damn Leapster will have your kid reading before he goes to Kindergarten or if she's speaking two languages or doing algebra. If they can't get along in society, how will they make friends? get through a college interview? a job interview? Or even a dinner at Olive Garden.......