sueeeus

This can be filed under things that will never happen to me. 

I’ve become one of those mothers of uncontrollable children.  You know the ones.  The ones you see in supermarkets pushing a shopping cart with a child screaming at the top of his lungs, one leg out of the cart, holding on to the sides, wailing, crying, screaming, and shouting, “Stop the bus!  Stop the bus!”  amidst sobs, shrieks, wails, and tears.  Yes, I am that mother.  The one who continues pushing the cart, ignoring the pleas, pretending that nobody else is observing, amusedly or not, the fracas. 

And when the store clerk kindly reminds me that I need to restrain my child, for his own safety, I smile and nod.  Yes, I want my child to fall out of the cart.  That’s why I am so lenient.   That’s why I haven’t strapped him in the safety seat.  Never mind that the struggle in order to get him into that safety seat would result in bruised shins at the very least.  He is very strong and he is very big.  He will arch his body or stiffen his body and do whatever it takes to remain out of that seat.  So I continue to push the cart with my unhappy boy, one leg over the edge, both hands gripping the sides, shouting, “Stop the bus!  Stop the bus!”  I push gently, at an even pace, so as not to make him stumble, and eventually he calms down and gets distracted by interesting things he sees in the aisles.

I could always avoid the potential of a toddler scene by staying out of the public, but how often does Cottonelle go on sale?  Matters of such import can hardly be ignored, and it was quite necessary to stock up.  Besides that, I was having an I-must-have-fried-chicken moment.  Horrible, horrible stuff.  All the same, it was nearly overwhelming and seemed worth the effort of managing a struggling child who absolutely, positively did not want to go shopping.

How can this angelic child possibly be anything but?  He is oh-so-willful, and at two-and-a-half, he doesn’t understand, for some reason, that he can’t always have his way.  His emotions are like a light switch.  When he’s happy, he’s happy, and when he’s not, he’s not.  There is no in-between.

I’m sure it’s all normal.  As my mother would say, par for the course.  The chicken was disappointing, but we are good to go on the Cottonelle front.  Forty double rolls of soft quilted goodness.  That should hold us for quite some time.