Drift Reality

Nam-Viet is a great Vietnamese place in Cleveland Park with really tasty pho (if anyone knows the accurate pronunciation of this word please let me know), good prices, and friendly service. I ordered a beef dish once and regretted it when it came drenched in a slimy glaze that reminded me of cheap Chinese food. I often go with a friend who lives in Cleveland Park and she normally orders the grilled shrimp and scallops on skewers and although I have never tried them, they look pretty delicious.

Actually, that’s all I have to say about the restaurant. The reason I’m even writing about the restaurant is because of an experience I had the other day when we ate there before heading to the gym.

We entered and the host promptly seated us at a table near the front window. The restaurant was absolutely packed, a situation my friend believes can be attributed to a recent positive review of the place in the Washingtonian magazine.

At any rate, my friend immediately noticed a young boy who couldn’t have been older than three, seated at the table directly adjacent to ours. We both were tentative on whether or not to sit near the potential threat of a screaming, unhappy kid, but he looked rather calm so we decided to take our chances.

The meal passed without any incident and as we were finishing up, I looked over to see that the young boy was standing right next to me and staring at me intently, with his Mother standing several feet behind.

“Hey buddy,” I blurted to the boy. “What’s going on?”

In response, the young boy put his arms out.

Then, a very strange thing happened.

A voice inside my head began whispering a quip to me, but I brushed it off and instead leaned forward and picked the boy up, placing him so that he was standing on my lap. He promptly sat down and made himself comfortable while his Mother giggled a bit.

He then swiveled in my lap, so that he was facing across the table at my friend.

“I think he is trying to move in on your date,” his Mother said.

Again, a voice inside my head began to formulate an explanation of how it wasn’t a date, but simply dinner with a friend, but somehow the words just dissolved as I instead addressed the boy.

“Hey buddy, are you moving in on my date?”

It was strange, like there was some sort of emotional gravitational field around the kid and in the face of this field, my normal personality just dissipated and it became completely about the kid.

He turned away from my friend and I could tell that he wanted to go, so I helped him to the ground and he headed towards his Mother.

My friend and I both smiled at him and his Mother as they returned to their table and I couldn’t help but be thankful that we hadn’t decided to sit elsewhere out of fear of a crying, screaming kid.

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