Tis a story of deeds and battles, good and evil, right and wrong, and a struggle wherein all seemed lost and the forces of good were in retreat when victory came at the last moment and all that is good and right won the day, fair and true, with no further contest.

It’s also the story of what happened to me and my crew last Friday night at Denny’s.

My friends and I have a habit of going to Denny’s for dinner every Friday night. Save the Denny’s hate…. it’s good simple food at a good price in a comfortable and relaxed atmosphere and the staff there are super nice and seem genuinely happy to have us there every week. As far as I am concerned, that makes it golden, and you can take all your “Eww, but it’s Denny’s” bourgeois pooh-poohing, roll it in chipotle and artisan bread crumbs. and shove it up your Moxy’s.

So last Friday, April 15th (tax day for you Yankees, just another Friday for us lucky Canucks), it was me, my dear wonderful roomie Joe, his boyfriend (and soon to be roomie) the gentle and helpful Julian, and that internationally recognized source of beauty, charm, and 80’s cartoon nostalgia, my best friend, Felicity.

Usually we make the scene in the general vicinity of 8 pm (we’re late eaters), but due to various little factors like my needing to cash a check and Felicity’s lessons running late, we actually didn’t show up till more in the vicinity of 9 pm.

Joe and I arrived first, and settled in to wait for the others. We had settled in to our usual table way in back, near the extremely fake fireplace in the back left corner, and were sipping our drinks and pondering appetizer choices when in through the door came the restaurant goer’s worst nightmare : a gaggle of young mothers with (dramatic STING) babies.

And whaddaya know, the minute they sit a few tables over from us, the little demons darlings picked up their utensils and began rhythmically banging them on the table.

And their gaggle of young mothers were, of course, completely ignoring this and chatting on merrily as if nothing unusual was happening.

Now my friends and I, we’re nice people. Sweet guys. Sensitive, intelligent, caring people. (and yes ladies, 3/4 of us are gay. Figures, doesn’t it?)

But we’re nice quiet people. We are quiet people who like quiet places where we can chat and hang out and enjoy one another’s company without having to compete with, for instance, loud music blaring. One of the reasons we have been so very loyal to this particular Denny’s is that they completely buck the trend of musical ubiquity and have their music at a nice comfortable background level. This means a lot fo us quiet sensitive bookish types.

Obviously, then, extremely loud little ones who, you might be interested, soon began adding piercing shrieks a random intervals to their percussive performance, are just not part of the program. Joe and I were sitting there, our emotional temperature rising with every erratic and irregular burst of banging and shrieking.

But neither of us are quick to anger or fond of confrontation. Quiet, bookish types, remember? But we knew that when Felicity showed up, things would escalate. Because while nobody is really fond of noisy shrieking ill mannered babies, it is definitely A Thing with my dear friend Felicity, and we knew that she was not likely to take this situation as passively as we had up to this point.

I was worried. Not about Felicity, but about myself. Part of what makes me a little reluctant to get into it with strangers is that I don’t always control my temper well once I let it loose and I was afraid that if it did become a confrontation between our party and the Pretending We’re Not Moms crew, it would turn into a whole huge screaming match and someone would end up in jail or some shit.

Probably not a rational fear, but there nonetheless.

So anyhow, Felicity shows up and is, of course, unwilling to accept the status quo. I don’t blame her at all. At first, the staff suggest that we move from the back room to the front lounge, thus putting the entire restaurant between us and the noisy klatch of maternality manque’.

But no! As fate would have it, that very night was also the night of a Canucks playoff game, and so the front lounge was full of loud hockey fans just itching to raise a ruckus every time someone scored a goal. That was not an option either.

So there we were, caught in an intolerable situation. What would we do? What COULD we do?

Well, you’ll just have to tune in tomorrow to find out!