Tag Archives: embarrassing

Bad Mom in Public

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10

I had this nice idea to pick T up from work, get a pizza and head to the playground to enjoy what might just be the most beautiful evening of the year. The weather was amazing. Not hot. Not cool. Just right. Pizza ordered, drinks, napkins etc packed, T picked up at 5PM on the nose, swing by pizza place and head to the park. Sounds great, right?

We’re not the only ones with this idea. (Well, we may be the laziest. The park was dotted with other families with picnic dinners but no one else carrying in a pizza box.) I noticed all the other families having this lovely time together and I felt great to be among them. This is what having little kids is all about. The park was peaceful, even quiet. We couldn’t hear the other families’ voices from where we sat. Even at the playground, where several kids were playing, the only sounds were a squeaky swing and the lilt of small voices at play.  There were no parental voices shouting out commands, threats and directives. Except mine. I’m that loud lady who ruined your picnic.

L was too excited by the playground to even consider the pizza. He ran laps around the whole thing and was up and down off of each climbing structure so many times we couldn’t keep track of him. And, as he passed any other child, he carefully aimed and fired his finger gun in their face while making that fucking annoying shooting sound that seems to be genetically encoded in the y-chromosome.

Loud voice: “L! Stop shooting the other children! There is to be no more shooting!”

I should have been more specific. I needed to actually list all things that there should be none of. Because he did listen and stopped shooting, and instead started throwing Spidey webs in the children’s faces with another annoying y-chromosome sound effect.

“L! Come here please! …. Come.Here.Now.”

He comes and I explain that he is not to do any annoying thing in any child’s face. He is not to make mean faces; he is not to growl; he is not to shoot anything, including, but not limited to, guns and webs. And, if he’s smart, he’ll sit down and eat some pizza because there will be no more food tonight.

He doesn’t sit down but by the time I’m done explaining all of this to him the other parents have corralled their kids to a separate, far away, part of the playground nowhere near the picnic table where we’ve set up camp.

The other things I shouted out during our time in the park include:

“You’re going to go to bed hungry!” (Which elicited some surprised dirty looks from the lovely couple escorting their sweet, somewhere-between-14-and-16-month-old out of the park.)

“Whatever that is, stop putting your hand in it!”

“Stop putting your foot in it too!”

“I mean it about no more food tonight!”

“This pizza is dinner, and if you don’t eat dinner there will be no snack, no dessert, no food at all.”

“That’s not your phone, put it down please!”

“That’s still not your phone!”

You see, I was sitting at the picnic table having dinner. I was not going to run after L at the park in order to tell him these things in a conversational voice. Dinner time is a time to sit and eat and if he chooses not to, it’s his (stupid) decision and he will just miss out on the meal. So, I had to be a little louder than all the polite people in the park with their sweet, polite children.

One day, I want to be one of them. I want to be the one having a really good time with my family. Not just a time where there were some OK moments, maybe a good moment or two, mixed in with a lot of frustration and embarrassment. L can be so sweet and friendly or he can shoot kids in the face, and I really can’t predict which L I’ll get. Will he be fun L, or scary psychopath L?

In the end he never did eat any pizza. He cried the entire way home, and went to bed hungry. Guess who won’t be ruining your picnic again any time soon?

Public Humiliation (and not just mine)

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7

One day when L was 22 or 23 months old he asked to poop on the potty. Positive that nothing would come of it, I said sure and popped him onto the toilet. To my utter amazement, he pooped and peed and asked for underpants. So began L’s potty training. We went to the store that day and bought some underpants.

To encourage his potty interest, I rewarded him with 1 m&m for pee and 2 for poop. We spent the next few days at home, drinking lots of juice, spending waaaaaaay more time than I liked in our tiny downstairs bathroom, and having m&ms.

The m&ms were a huge hit. He had never had any candy before and I think they blew his mind. For the next several months, I continued with the m&m rewards. L was only too happy to go to the bathroom back in those days! But that’s not the point of this story. Unintentionally, I ingrained in his mind a very strong association between m&ms and going potty. I don’t think it ever occurred to him that m&ms exist outside of that paradigm. Until, one day, I took him to a puppet show.

This was a huge mistake. The whole endeavor was a disaster and I should have known better. At 2, L was even less capable of sitting still or following a plot than he is now. The show was a marionette version of the story of Perseus. WTF was I thinking? We arrive and hit the potties first thing. On our way back to our seats we pass the concession stand; feeling generous and still naively excited for our outing, I bought L some chips. L is so excited to be in the theater. He’s barely big enough to hold the folding seat down, but he’s determined and he sits, waits, and munches on chips. This is going to be great!

Waiting has never been one of L’s strengths. Soon he’s restless and bored. He notices two girls, maybe 11 or 12 years old, sitting in the row in front of us, but 5 or 6 seats down to our right. They are eating m&ms. (Were you wondering how this was going to tie in?) A whole big bag of m&ms. L has never seen a large bag of m&ms, never seen m&ms aside from the 1 or 2 he’d get for going potty. He was amazed, fascinated and wanted to know everything. “Mommy! Look! Doze girls go potty?” “Shhh, L.”

I can’t stop what happens next. The lights begin to fade. L leans over the chair in front of him (yes, it’s occupied) to get the girls’ attention. “Girls! Hey! Girls! ‘Cuze me! You go poop on the potty?” This is loud. Everyone is looking, including the girls, who are mortified. I pull, I hush, I hold him on my lap. I try to make him (and everyone) pay attention to the show that’s beginning on stage. But L is determined to find out how one gets hold of a huge bag of m&ms. What exactly does he have to do on the potty to get that? He needs to know.

He continues to harass the poor, humiliated girls. “Was it big poops? Pee too?” It couldn’t get worse for these girls. I was able to distract him for a few minutes with the show, but he quickly realized that he didn’t know wtf was going on, and he was too young to even get wtf marionettes were. Somehow, naturally, all the other kids in the audience were watching quietly.

We stayed for maybe 20 minutes. Definitely 20 minutes too long. Every couple of minutes he lurched forward again to re-humiliate the girls by asking detailed questions about their bowel movements. Of course, no one had any idea why my son was so curious about any of this. This m&m association is just his own. Those poor girls.

I finally dragged him out of there while he screamed “BUT I WANT TO KNOW IF THEY POOPED!” I yelled at him the whole drive home. I promised I would never take him anywhere ever again. And we soon stopped the m&m reward system altogether.

I was reminded of this story today when a friend offered some m&ms to L. He’s now seen them here and there and the association has worn off. Stupidly, I will probably take L to another marionette show at some point in his life.

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Embarrassment

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12

When I was a kid my parents embarrassed me. Constantly and on purpose. I grew up believing that it was a parent’s right, nay job, to embarrass their offspring. So, now that I’m a parent, it’s my job too, right? Well, it turns out I’m still learning that life isn’t fair. Because I’m still the one being embarrassed. This time by my offspring. My evil genius, L.

He’s embarrassed me in so many ways. Opening bathroom doors when I’m, well, not ready. Talking about indelicate topics in front of other people (“My nipples are small, and so are daddy’s, but mommy’s are big!”) Or, my favorite, throwing a complete tantrum because I would not buy him a training bra. That’s right. A training bra.

Here’s the scene: Target, tween girl section. A huge display of training bras in a myriad of attractive pastels. Think a wall of Easter eggs. But soft and silky, lightly padded (wtf?) and smooth. L heaven. He wanted one. Bad. He walked up to the display wall as if in a trance. Arms outstretched. He touched every bra he could reach. “They’re so soft and pretty. Can I have one, Mommy? Pleeeeaaaaaase??” I hear some snickering from somewhere behind me. “No, L, I’m sorry, you can’t have one of those. Those are training bras and they’re for big girls, not 3-year-old boys.”

Fast forward about 8 seconds. L is now on the floor screaming. He is kicking everything in sight. Between the shrieks and sobs he is saying the following things: “I want a training bra!” “I am a big girl!” “I don’t like you, Mommy!” “Training bra!” “Training braaaaaaaaa!”

I now have the attention of all Target shoppers. Most think it’s pretty hilarious, and really, I do too and would certainly have enjoyed myself if this were someone else’s kid. But it was mine.

It’s OK though. I have a plan. I will win this one in the end. With just a little patience, I will have the last laugh. See, I’m storing this memory for future use. It’s a weapon. My embarrassment at the time will be nothing compared to his when I feel the time is right to retell this story. To a group of his friends? To his girlfriend? His future in-laws? All the guests at his wedding? Time will tell when it will come back out. It all depends on how well L treats me from here on out.

At last! I will have the last laugh! Revenge will be mine! (Rubbing hands together, maniacally laughing.)

Remembering Privacy

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3

Privacy. Remember that? Let me paint a picture for you: I’m perched on the toilet. The baby is hellbent on getting to the garbage can to my left, so I have one leg pressed against the wall to prevent her from getting there. She’s whining and crying as she tries her best to wedge her head between my shin and the wall. As if that’s not enough, L is suddenly fascinated about how I possibly can pee without having a penis so he’s on the other side of me trying to get behind me so he can get his head down under my butt to have a good view. (Yes, I mean get his head into the toilet behind and under me. WTF?) This is all a little close for comfort.

Public bathrooms are even a worse scene. Ever since L could walk, which unfortunately was 10 months, he has been impossible to contain in a bathroom stall. He has regularly opened doors to expose me (this still happens). Not so bad in a ladies room, really fucking embarrassing if in a single bathroom in, say, a restaurant. He also regularly has climbed under stalls to check out the neighbors. I’m sure they thought I was a horrible mom, but I’M SITTING ON THE TOILET MID-STREAM! I can’t get up and grab the little bugger! I then have the humiliating and infuriating task of coaxing him out of whatever stall he’s in, all while apologizing profusely to the poor woman in there with him. “Just climb under the door NOW!” “But me just talking to this lady…” (This happened more, thankfully, when he was 2 and hadn’t yet discovered the word “I” and thus spoke like Captain Caveman.)

I know that moms who work outside the home have a myriad of challenges that I don’t face. They have to juggle things in a way that makes their lives entirely complicated in ways that my life is entirely simple. And I in no way want to start a who-has-it-harder debate – it sucks for all of us.  However, I envy them 2 things: first, and unrelated to this post, I envy their commute. I don’t care if you’re crammed in a subway, sitting in traffic or whatever, you are ALONE and responsible for only yourself. Second, their daily trips to the bathroom while at work. I swear I’d spend all day in there.

I know I can leave the kids out of the bathroom and I do sometimes, but it does make me nervous when they’re alone together. L has a way of making that baby scream bloody murder without leaving a mark. By the time I get there, he’s innocent as an angel putting away his books or something (yeah, right!). “What? I didn’t do nuckin’!” (Do your preschoolers talk like thugs too?)

Ashamed to say that on those rare occasions when T and I go out to dinner alone, I relish the time not with my husband, but my time in the bathroom the most. I apply lipstick. I fix my hair. I might even wash my hands twice and actually dry them all the way. Not to mention, I can pee without fear of exposure.