Lunch In the City

Five impeccable young women, a fashion spread come to life, were sitting in the food court of the downtown mall on an average workday, engaged in brisk, snappy conversation with each other. Cell phones, hair clips, and sandwiches were in motion around the table.

I caught snippets from my table: an intransigent boyfriend, the merits of grad school, a new restaurant, a fiancée's stuck-up family. Meanwhile, wheelchairs were being silently glided up to an adjacent table. People with apparent disabilities and poor motor skills were having chicken fingers and pizza placed in front of them by assistants. As they began to eat, one young man made a deafening "AAAAAAA!" sound. To my untrained ear, it didn't sound like distress. He was possibly just enjoying his Sbarro's.

The gabbing hens at the other table became silent. They exchanged looks. It was impossible to ignore, and it disrupted the timing of their dialogue. After a few minutes, the conversation picked up, with more cautious enthusiasm. But once the dishing and nodding and listening was in full force, the sound returned: "AAAAAAA!"

The psychology of the moment was frozen on the faces of these young women. Sympathy and shame did battle with annoyance. It would have been incredibly rude to move tables, but the big lunch had been completely ruined.

As the father of a 9-year-old daughter, I can see how Barbie dolls may promote strange, unrealistic ideals. But I wonder sometimes if a steady diet of NBC sitcoms and savvy urban TV doesn't cause older girls to expect other, unrealistic ideals. It extends beyond the food court, and the only real danger is bitterness when you discover you're not quite the star you had imagined yourself to be, and the crazy scriptwriter has a taste for irony.