Chick Wit: Shut up and eat - and douse the lights

I'm so excited about a new restaurant that just opened in a trendy part of Brooklyn.

You know what's on the menu?

Silence.

You got it. I'm going, and I'm taking Mother Mary.

It's true. This new restaurant has rules, and one of the rules is that you're not allowed to talk in the restaurant.

This is an even better restaurant rule than my personal favorite, Employees Must Wash Hands Before Returning to Work.

The restaurant owner got the idea for a silent-dining restaurant after a trip he took to India, where he saw Buddhist monks eating breakfast without talking.

This is what comes from travel.

Or so I hear, because I don't travel.

I hate to travel.

In fact, if I travel, it's to a restaurant.

The owner of the restaurant says, "The silence speaks for itself."

I agree. However, what the silence says is anybody's guess.

I think the silence has strongly held opinions on the government shutdown, Obamacare, and most important, whether these jeans make me look fat.

The chef at the restaurant says they don't need talking because "there's such a strong energy in the room."

Wow!

I think I might go to Brooklyn and start talking to silence and energy.

I could travel to Brooklyn!

By the way, the menu at the restaurant is $40 per meal, which proves that silence is golden.

Or at least totally overpriced.

In case you're interested in going, the restaurant is called Eat, but I think it should be called Shut Up.

Or Shut Up and Eat, which was what Mother Mary used to say to me all the time, when I was little.

She also used to say: Shut Up and Go Clean Your Room.

Shut Up and Wipe That Smile Off Your Face.

Shut Up and Get Out of My Sight.

And my personal favorite, Watch Your Tone.

Meanwhile, silent dining is a great idea!

I know a lot of people I would happily go to dinner with if I didn't have to interrupt my eating to talk to them or worse, to listen to them.

Mainly my ex-husbands, Thing One and Thing Two.

In fact, both of my horrible marriages would have been improved if we could have eaten dinner in silence. Or better yet, if we could have pretended that our stony silence during dinner was somebody else's rule and not the state of our horrible marriage.

Actually, that's an exaggeration.

We did talk during dinner. I remember once I said, "Pass the salt."

Does that count?

Probably not, because what I really meant was "Pass the arsenic."

Too dark?

Which gives me another idea, because I also read about another new restaurant called In the Dark, and the rule there is that you have to eat in total darkness.

Don't you want to bring your exes there?

I would, but I'd go further. I'd like to open a new kind of restaurant that combined the two ideas. In other words, where you had to eat in the dark and you weren't allowed to talk to the people you were with.

Wow!

Great idea, huh?

I might be onto something, right?

I swear, I'd still be married to Thing One and/or Thing Two if I never had to see them or talk to them.

I thought I had to get a divorce to avoid seeing or talking to them, but it turns out, all I had to do was take them to my new restaurant.

Who knew?

What a country!