Jamie Reidy recounts an eye-opening trip to America’s newest family restaurant.

My parents never took me to Hooters when I was a kid. I guess you could say they ran a pretty tight ship.

Mom once wondered why I was always sleeping over my friends’ houses, but none of the guys ever wanted to sleep over our place. It didn’t take long for me to respond. “Uh, I have to go to bed before most fourth graders; we have cable, but I’m not allowed to watch MTV or R-rated movies; and we don’t have Atari, Intelevision or Colecovision.” In hindsight, we were practically Amish.

Sunday, for the first time since I discontinued therapy, I thought about those abuses my parents inflicted upon me. It’s one thing to deny an American boy his inalienable rights to primetime television, music videos and Donkey Kong, but it’s quite another to shield him from the wholesome dining experience that is Hooters.

I didn’t realize that the world-famous chicken wing chain is now considered fit for family fare. Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum really should target Hooters across the Super Tuesday states.

A close friend from Notre Dame was in Palm Springs for a conference, so we decided to meet halfway between there and Los Angeles. Chris told me to pick the place.

Considering he is the married father of two girls and three boys under 13, I thought he’d like to watch the NBA all-star game and enjoy a few beers in a kid-free zone. Being unfamiliar with anything in the “909″—hip cats in LA and the OC mock the residents of area code 909 as pick ‘em up truck driving white trash—I consulted the Internet for a suitable location.

Thankfully, Hooters, Inc. has a helpful website, with a feature that allows the user to pinpoint the nearest restaurant to wherever he/she is in America!

I arrived before Chris, and immediately sighed with contentment. The nice thing about chain restaurants is the consistency; you, as a patron, always know what to expect. Hooters is no different: the smell of hot sauce…the wooden tables…shapely women putting themselves through veterinary school in complimentary tight, white tank tops, uncomplimentary short orange shorts, and horrible hose…the families.

The families???

Distrusting my own vision, I continued looking around the establishment in disbelief. But there was no getting around it: amidst the dozens of men drinking beer and ogling waitresses at the Ontario Hooters, five tables held adults with boys and/or girls under 12 years of age.

“They must’ve come here right after church services, huh?” Chris said as he plopped down in his chair. I snickered.

To our immediate left sat a grandmother, a mother and a grandson. I joked about how tough it must be for the sixth grader to refrain from stealing glances at the waitresses without his Nana or Mama catching him. Chris astutely pointed out that the kid didn’t have to steal glances; he was flat out staring, turning his head to follow a woman as she breezed past him. We waited for one of his female elders to smack him upside the head with a greasy hand, but it never happened.

Three tables away, a father in an Oakland Raiders jersey (perhaps no more needs to be said) sat with his son, who appeared to be nine. Periodically, the man would nudge the boy, smile lasciviously and point to a particular waitress.

Now, I’m no pediatrician and I’ve never taken a psychology class, but I have watched a lot of “Law and Order: SVU” and “Criminal Minds,” so I think I am sufficiently qualified to recognize the environment in which a a future criminal will develop. We should have called the FBI to alert them to the rare opportunity to watch a deviant mature.

Before leaving, the boy’s mother bought him the annual Hooters swimsuit calendar.

“What the hell are these people thinking?” I asked, discreetly checking out the token natural blonde. Chris rolled his eyes and pointed to a table I hadn’t seen. “Try explaining that,” he said.

I followed the direction of his finger and had to blink twice: two women seated at a table with three girls. We couldn’t tell if these were life partners with their kids or just two friends, but that’s irrelevant.

Why would two women bring young, impressionable girls to Hooters?!

I hoped this was a field trip, a feminist version of “Scared Straight”, the movie in which juvenile delinquent boys are brought into prison to meet with hardened cons who—hopefully—frighten the teens off their road to incarceration. Judging from the total lack of conversation between the women and girls, though, life lessons were not in session.

As we walked out, I had one last question for Chris. “So, is there a Hooters near your house?”

He nodded. “Ohhh, yeeeaaah.” Then he smiled and paused. “I can’t wait to tell my wife what a nice family restaurant Hooters has become. ‘It’s not at all like it used to be, Sweetie. There are grandmas there, and everything!’ Pfft.  That should be an easy sell.”

Somehow, I don’t think my mom would buy it, either.

Photo courtesy of noelweathers