Dinner tonight with friends at Red Robin, which always sounds like a filthy remark more than a restaurant. A glowing oasis of briskly transacted food commerce in the middle of the vast and forbidding strip mall parking lot, a sturdy and reassuring corporate presence, a concrete bunker of mild satisfaction containing no unpleasant surprises and no pleasant ones, created not to satisfy appetites so much as to neutralize them before they can frighten or disarm.

Inside, a female child led us to our round table for six, and another female child took our drink orders. The menus were gleaming, laminated, and extremely large, apparently designed to occupy easily-distracted children. The whole thing was very infantilizing, come to think of it. Televisions placed in strategic corners (Winnie the Pooh was playing), brightly decorated walls with geometric designs, it all had a playhouse or dayroom atmosphere. There was a bar but it seemed incongruous; liquor implies defeat and resignation, partly, and those qualities are not on mother's menu. One doesn't come to Red Robin to seek oblivion. Red Robin makes oblivion beside the point.

On the menu, photographs of food and dancing typefaces, inviting the inner child to grasp and point. For a moment I considered the possibility that my order would have to be approved by a sponsoring adult, the manager brought over to ask me if I really wanted all those french fries. I ordered a cocktail from our girl server, she took it down with well-coached approval, a look of "great choice!" on her impossibly young face. Anything anyone orders is exactly what she'd order, every time. Shouldn't she be at home studying or talking on a Princess phone as she idly pulls little balls of stuffing out of her comforter? The others got the bottomless strawberry lemonade, and our girl came with a refill pitcher, and everyone looked like they had to remind themselves not to clap at this sudden bounty.