Mothers against drunk children

I am traveling right now and I had a 3+ hour drive ahead of me today, so I did what any normal person would do: I loaded my phone up with old episodes of Watch What Crappens podcasts. I’m sure I could listen to something informative or, you know, from the last six months, but I wanted to be entertained while I drove through LA traffic.

SO, I was listening to an episode from months and months ago and Ben (one of the podcast hosts) offhandedly mentioned a video he once posted to YouTube of his reaction to a baby in front of him crying on an airplane (imagine lots of sighs and eye-rolls on his part.) He said every year around Thanksgiving, he gets an email from, say, a CNN producer, asking if they can show a clip of his video for their piece on holiday travel. His video is like the go-to for networks to show on this type of a report. I found this all very delightful.

He mentioned, though, that the reason he was so eye-roll-y was that the parents were acting like the kid was just a can of soda; the husband was doing a crossword puzzle and the wife was doing something else and point is, they were not actively trying to get their child to stop crying.

Dickheads.

That is not really my point here, but merely my setup for this: I believe there are two types of people in this world (well, three, if you count the parents above), those who speak lovingly to their terrible child in public (not me), those who hiss and/or snarl at their terrible child in public (me), and I suppose those who just ignore their terrible child in public (a woman I recently saw at Target, who stood talking on her cell phone, facing away from her child who was simultaneously yelling AND crawling his way out of the cart. He almost gave me a heart attack, I thought he was going fall and flip the cart over on himself. Thanks a lot, lady.)

I am a hiss and/or snarler. I am not nice when my child misbehaves. Sometimes I see other mothers talking kindly to their child, all, “What is wrong, what’s the matter?” and then I’m like, god, what a wench I am, but you know what? There is no crying in public. Also, what’s wrong?! What’s wrong is that my child is two and at two-years-old, everything is wrong. Unless it’s right. Wait, no, wrong again. Etc. I love her, but damn, she can be a roller coaster ride.

(She is mostly a delight in public, I must say, and the times when I do have to hiss and/or snarl are few and far between, but still. I don’t have time to find out what’s wrong because you’re embarrassing me, kid.)

When we lived in San Diego, I used to listen to a radio show every morning and one of the hosts mentioned that many years back, when his kids were really young, they never left the house. He said it very matter-of-factly, “Those were the years we didn’t leave the house” and I kind of liked that. I’ve remembered it over the years and sort of wondered when we’d get to that stage. I wouldn’t say we’re there yet, but possibly so. A lot of our activities are kid-centric things (the zoo, the pumpkin patch), but at the same time, we also go to wineries and bring LG and as I mentioned above, she is pretty acceptable for public consumption FOR NOW, so I don’t think we’re there yet.

My standards, though, they are high. Because here’s the thing, I don’t really like kids. I like my own and a very small handful of others, but I am not a, “What a cute kid” type of person about stranger kids. I find stranger kids mostly…strange…and I don’t want to hear them or look at them or even acknowledge them. So as long as LG sits in a restaurant and quietly colors or looks at pictures of herself on my phone (her most fave thing ever, selfie time!), then I think we’re good. When she starts talking to people at other tables, then it may be time for us to go into hiding.

Or possibly when she announces to an entire wine tasting room full of people, “I GOT MY DIAPAH CHANGED!”

Enjoying some sparkling juice, like a lady.