As was typical for my mother, anything worth doing should be done blissfully unaware it was odd. It was a lifelong joke to compare our mother to the antics of the "I Love Lucy" character. This was, for us everyday life. I have since learned this was not so in any home but ours. In this instance a simple dinner out turned into a scene from a comic version of the Godfather. The cause was our mother asking precisely the oddest person to suggest a good restaurant.
I'm in college and at twenty years old safely tucked away fifty miles from home (For New York this is like saying "the other side of the planet") mom was ensconced in the home she had recently and illicitly purchased in White Plains NY. (Yet another story that is best told at another time.) A town we had never even heard of before we went to look at this house.
I was happily frolicking over the fields of Adelphi University in Long Island New York. As I explained it to others in my school, "free at last , free at last, thank god almighty free at last. That part bears explanation. you see I knew I was gay at a very early age and had come to terms with it by the age of thirteen. However I was not in a position to share this revelation at home. Any and all things *homo* were to be tucked out of sight. As I like to call it, I had Straightened up for those at home. The single most significant thing was my being out of the house and able to breathe the fresh gay air.
I loved my mother and the distance between us helped keep that love alive.
At the same time my sister was in school in Purchase NY. Sadly for her she had chosen her school before the move money materialized so when the idea of buying a house came up the sights were set as close to Purchase as possible. 
This was not as problematic for her as it would have been for me. You see my mother may have held high standards for the men my sister might like but this was not something I wished to test in reference to me. In other words I had no reason to make my potential sexuality a topic of family chat. 
One day in the autumn I get a call from mom. She wanted to take my sister and I out for dinner and a show in Manhattan. Again I have to remind people that this woman never did things small. For example; The previous year she turned the seventy five foot pine tree in front of our house into a permanent Christmas tree. but I digress. 
To arrange this day out in the city she contacted a childhood friend of hers who used to get her into all the best clubs and restaurants in Manhattan. In this instance she wanted a family night out so she didnt invite Eddie who turns out to not only have been a member of a crime family but, a highly placed member of that family. She was told by him of a remarkable restaurant on the upper east side called Tre Amici. 
That Saturday came and we met at home and got dressed for the dinner and the show. We drove into the city and parked conveniently by the restaurant. We decided to get there early so we could eat then casually stroll past shops on our way across town to the theater. An ambitious goal given this is down town 25 blocks and across to the west side.
We arrive at the massive double doored restaurant with the kind of enormous twist turned brass handles one would imagine was likely to be accompanied by a singing harp and the booming footsteps of someone chanting Fee Fie Foe Fum! 
It is now 5:15 or thereabouts and highly unlikely the restaurant is open but we open the door and step inside. Across the floor and up one step behind a wrought iron railing (what is it with indoor wrought iron in Manhattan?) is seated the entire waitstaff at two enormous round tables and a few leaning against the back wall. The tables easily seat ten people. We promptly get ignored. We wait. Finally a lesser level staffer possibly bus boy puts out his cigarette and strolls over to deliver the news that the restaurant is closed until 6 pm. 
As all good natured people do, we excused ourselves and exited. We begin to walk away and mom realizes that if we dont eat early we will have to drive around the theater district hunting for parking in the worst time and pay for parking twice so we convince ourselves to return the 40 feet or so to request if they would allow us to eat early.
We get the same bus boy who was not too far away from the castle doors either and mom explains we were recommended by her friend who she names and before finishing the sentence sees this poor boy turn white. A prodigious accomplishment for an olive complected Sicilian. He tells us to stay there and runs to the back where he delivers the news that they just ignored and rejected people who might just get someone in the unenviable position of being the next cinder block in the East River. 
Everyone leaps up from the tables and scatter. The head waiter speeds over to us to apologize for the oversight and escorts us through the maze of tables to the one they just vacated. All twenty of the staff had cleaned and set the table in the thirty seconds it took to walk us over. We are seated at what can only be described as triangle formation at a table for ten. Now there are only three chairs and airspace for another two families to join us. This does not happen. Something else entirely occurs. We become a human rendition of a circular tower of waiters. The staff surround us in white jacketed black tux pants and become nothing more than arms looking for all the world like a soft Stonehenge. We never saw any faces because we couldn't bring ourselves to look up for the duration of the dinner. 
We couldn't look up, not without laughing out loud. Not that we didnt try. We did try but every time one of us attempted to look up we realized we would be looking directly into the faces of the remarkably well mannered staff that left us standing for 15 minutes and sent us back out into the rain just minutes earlier. 
They couldn't do enough to make us happy. We wanted for nothing. If I sipped my water a glass pitcher came over my shoulder and filled it the amount of my sip every time. If my sister saw a spot on her fork and set it back down there came a hand over her shoulder and the fork disappeared. Presumably sent to the spot in the river they hoped would not be their next smoking station. My mother would flick an ash into an ashtray and an ashtray impersonating a lid would come over her shoulder as a protective cover to conceal the offending ash and both of these would also magically dissolve like a witness in a protection program. The next pair of perfectly clean crystal ashtrays would immediately take the place of the original. 
This went on through the suggestions of what we might like to eat and the ordering process where we received countless compliments for our excellent insights into the culinary art that somehow seemed to be our achievements. We waited for our appetizers for what seemed an eternity in complete silence. Bless her heart my mother tried to speak but each time she tried to begin a conversation our responses were to quickly tell the answer about our time at school directly to our plate or our napkin covered laps. This went on throughout dinner as well as the payment of the bill where we received complimentary desserts. The desserts were rolled over on a cart and we selected from a host of confections one imagines a Royal or at the very least a Bishop might expect.
We were deadly silent the entire time which is unheard of for us. Dinner out we always laughed and told stories and sharpened our wits but not tonight. Tonight we were mutes with only the ability to order and occasionally giggle in every attempt to look at each other. 
We noticed that we had passed the opening time of 6 pm when people began to enter the restaurant. They were left standing at the door raincoats and umbrellas and haggard staring groups who could not fathom why twenty waiters were standing in shoulder to shoulder formation in a circle at the back wall while Manhattans elite stood shivering in the giant doorway to the Italian castle. Time ticked past as if it was being marked off by a shrouded figure carrying a scythe. It is approaching 6:30 and slowly one by one the staff over the next ten or fifteen minutes filtered out to seat people and we tallied up and began debarking from our semi comatose situation comedy dinner.
Our coats are brought to us and each of us was the given assistance in dressing up for the ill mannered rain that clearly did not have the sense to avoid falling on such privileged people as ourselves.
We walked out past the final group of indignant elite and fairly stumbled over ourselves laughing as the doors boomed closed behind us.