I used to smile smugly at children who screamed and threw temper tantrums as I looked at my own sweet well-behaved daughter at my side believing I was such a good mother because she never acted that way. I believed, in my complete and utter naiveté and arrogance that parents could actually control their children’s behavior.
I was so deluded. Sadly, sadly deluded.
If there is a child flailing about on the floor in the cereal aisle, howling as boxes of Cheerios and Kix rain down on him, chances are good that’s it’s my son.
If you are in, say, Target and you hear ear-piercing screeching coming from the back of the store as if someone has put a cat through a meat grinder, likely, it’s my son.
If you are at some sort of entertainment event such as a movie or a play or even a sporting event and your enjoyment of such an event is disturbed by a flurry of tiny arms and legs thrashing at a red faced adult and shrieking as he is carried out of the venue and causes you to miss the best joke of the movie, your child’s only line in the play or the most unbelievable shot of the game, almost certainly, it’s my son.
Screaming is a big thing in our household. At least by him. I tried it once but gave up in utter shame at my poor showing. He’s a champ.
I am now the person other people walk by and either smile sympathetically or cluck their tongues depending on if they’ve been in my shoes. If they have, they understand that children suffer from the same fate as adults: They have free will and control is just an illusion perpetuated by people who don’t have children and people who have naturally very obedient children. To the latter, I say—you got lucky, people.
However for all the suffering his screaming causes me, there is a surprising upside.
If there is a child running through the grocery store yelling with a huge smile spread across his face yelling, “Mommy! I go potty!” before tackling his mother and throwing his arms around her legs, there’s a good chance, it’s my son.
If there is a child laughing heartily at a joke you think he couldn’t possible understand or laughing at the sheer joy of gliding on new ice skates before falling on his butt which just makes him laugh harder, likely, it’s my son.
If there is a child who goes from jumping up and down and screaming to giggles, smothering hugs and kisses and grand proclamations of love within 2.5 seconds, with absolute certainty, that’s my son.
How lucky am I?
Now when I see parents at the store or restaurant with a look of pinched embarrassment as they try to maintain some semblance of control over themselves and their screaming child thrashing about on the floor, I smile. I’m sympathetic, of course, but mostly, I’m glad I left mine at home.
P.S. I want to extend a huge thank you to my daughter, my first child who broke the ice and let me test the waters as a parent but didn’t test me too bad (at least not then!). She gave me the confidence to try again. Granted, it was completely arrogant and misguided confidence but that’s probably the grand joke of the universe. Either way, I am a doubly lucky parent. I have the best of both worlds.
I’m not sure why flossing always sends me over the edge. I know, of course, that flossing is indeed a very good thing and I would never want to be construed as an anti-flossite. But whenever I come to that part of the getting-ready-for-bed bathroom routine where I hear my dentist’s voice chastising me for not flossing, I think how much more can I take? Seriously, how much time does he think I have?
It used to be just enough to thoroughly brush your teeth and flossing was an after thought, a novelty (let’s not remember, however, the fad of brushing after every meal. Impractical! Or taking a half hour to brush one’s teeth by brushing each tooth separately. Insanity!), but now it’s an absolute, like say, brushing your teeth. After all, it only takes a couple of minutes, right? Yeah, in theory.
But he’s not the only voice I hear in my head when I fail to do something I have been told I should (and no, I’m not schizophrenic. Don’t even go there) by some expert or other. There’s conditioning my hair, tweezing my eyebrows, wearing foundation every day, shaving my legs, moisturizing my feet, loofahing, pushing back my cuticles, wearing sunscreen on every inch of my body every day of the year even though there is no sun in Minnesota for 5 months, moisturizing every inch of my skin daily (my god, between this and the sunscreen I could spend the whole day just slathering lotion) washing my face, moisturizing my face, home whitening my teeth and the list goes on and on. And they all have good reasons and they are, in fact, mostly very good things, and of course they only take a couple of minutes. Each.
It takes only a couple of minutes. How guilt inducing is that? Because who can’t find a couple of minutes? The problem is each expert has their own myopic view and doesn’t realize that I’m already spending an hour and a half doing what is absolutely necessary in order to present myself as a reasonably well-groomed and non-stinky individual. If I did all that I was supposed to do (as deemed by various dubious “professionals” who are really just trying to sell products), I can easily imagine a day in the not too near future where by the time I finish getting ready for the day, I will have to turn around and get ready for bed. Hygiene will completely take over every aspect of life.
Perhaps if we got all the people who implore us to spend just a couple extra minutes each day all together in one room they could battle it out to prioritize all of these things for us and we would learn that okay, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not important to shave your legs from October to April (May if you live in the northern climates) and you likely won’t get an infected ingrown hair that will leave an unsightly scar or suffer social embarrassment because everybody else will be hairy too, thusly making it socially acceptable. How nice would that be? And you don’t have to wear foundation in the summer (or really any other time of the year because the facial cleansing people will berate the makeup counter woman for clogging people’s pores and she will leave the room crying. Ha!) And teeth whitening will fall off the chart because consensus will show that glow-in-the-dark teeth really aren’t that attractive.
Perhaps I’m really afraid if I floss my teeth every day the next time I go to the dentist proud that yes, I brush and floss every day, rather than congratulate me on my good dental hygiene he will add another step. Say mouth disinfectant to kill the germs that cause bad breath, gum disease and nearly every communicable disease known to man. If I balk at the flossing, he can continue to scold me for my lax flossing habits and we never have to go there. And I preserve a couple extra minutes every day…say, that could add up…
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