A Taste Of Heaven in the Andersonville neighborhood sounds like heaven on earth for a childfree curmudgeo-woman like me. Naturally, the proprietor is now the most hated man on the Chicago North Side. Basically, he has a firmly worded little sign in the shop that states that “children of all ages have to use their indoor voices.”

Many former patrons are in an uproar, because the world is their living room, and how dare anyone object to the happy shrieks and “cute” antics of their children. Especially not anyone in a tin-ceilinged coffee shop in what used to be an artsy-fartsy neighborhood, but now seems to be changing to a trendy upscale young-couples-with-double-strollers kind of habitat.

Many cliched comments, from both sides, are offered. The same old arguments and reactionary posturing (so familiar from my days hanging around childfree newsgroups) are present in their less colorful realistically muted “real people interacting in real life” form, not in their cartooney “people who may actually be brains in jars wired up to a computer” form. People will remain true to form, egg each other on, and eventually someone will drop the Godwin bomb.

I am sure that Dan McCauley will receive some death threats and there may be vandalism, because that’s the inevitable result of someone failing to be impressed by a certain kind of self-involved yet socially oblivious parent. The same folks that take very young children to concerts, plays and concerts whose children have never even heard the term “inside voice.” Yep, they’re raising the next generation, and one of them has probably already left a horrific message on the restaurant’s answering machine. Cooler, more mature heads will respond with a boycott and possibly a picket line, complete with strollers and bullhorns.

Ridiculous? Of course it is.