MARK MY WORD: WHEN IT COMES TO DINNER, AMERICANS LIKE TO KEEP THE FAST LANE OPEN

It's 6 p.m. You've just rushed from work to pick up the kids at day care. Now, you've got to feed them and get your 6-year-old to Brownies. Your 2-year-old is in no mood to sit still.

It's times like these that parents appreciate drive-through restaurants. You don't have to unbuckle everyone and haul them inside. You also don't have to worry that they will turn into Mexican jumping beans once they've entered the diner. You don't have to think about bolting your kids to the restaurant booth.

Unfortunately, the city fathers in some places don't seem to understand the situation.

In Carrboro, N.C., for instance, the town council recently voted to ban new drive-through businesses in the downtown area in an effort to preserve that small-town "Andy Griffith" feeling.

One woman there told The Associated Press that she welcomed the latest ruts in the road. "I think the faster we go, the more unconscious we become," she says.

Of course, many of us have been unconscious for years. It is called parenthood. We're used to trying to juggle everything from diaper changes to balancing the checkbook.

Carrboro isn't the only town on this anti-drive-through kick. Other towns are putting a halt to the fast lane too.

In 1996, Sierra Madre, Calif., officials banned new drive-through restaurants to cut down on noise, light and traffic. The swallows returned to San Juan Capistrano this spring, but new drive-throughs made a wide detour.

Now, an Atlanta councilman is proposing to take the fast out of fast-food restaurants. He wants the city to stop issuing drive-through permits. The result, he says, would be less pollution from idling cars and more exercise for customers, who would have to get out of their cars for some fries and a burger.

I don't view going to a restaurant as exercise, particularly when everything on the menu has a zillion calories. Hey, if we wanted to eat healthy, we'd all be eating at home.

That would be a definite disaster for the restaurant industry. About a third of the $103 billion spent on fast food last year came from drive-through customers.

The pick-up window is part of everything from banking to dry cleaning. You can even get married on the run, although your new mother-in-law won't like it.

Personally, I like drive-throughs. You don't have to worry about poor service or escorting your children to the bathroom a million times. My wife, Joni, says I am drive-through challenged, however, because I have a tendency to forget what the rest of my family wants just moments before I must recite their requests to the unseen waitress.

I'm certain it's just a matter of drive-through amnesia, that Twilight Zone of a place where you just tune out all of life's little distractions and concentrate on what's really important, which is finding out if the restaurant still has Beanie Babies for sale.

Of course, grabbing a bite in the drive-through lane isn't the same as having a leisurely meal. But then most parents don't have leisurely meals until their kids go off to college.

As a dad, I can't recall the last time I had a take-your-time meal. With a 2-year-old and a 6-year-old in tow, Joni and I regularly admonish our children to sit down and act right when we are in restaurants. We also spend a lot of time trying to keep the food on the table and not in their laps.

Fortunately, Cape Girardeau is still a parent-friendly town.

As for Carrboro, things could be worse. People could live in the nearby town of Wilson, whose city fathers have banned stuffed furniture from people's front porches.

Such a ban seems to go against everything that Americans hold dear. We cherish our freedom to plant our stuffed furniture anywhere we like and display our tacky lawn ornaments.

The state of Arkansas was founded on such principles.

And at least in this neck of the woods, we like buckling up for dinner.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.