The other day, I, being the loving mother that I am, picked up a gently used playschool kitchen for the kiddies. There I was patting myself on the back for capitalizing on a friends frustration and getting a steal of a deal. $20 big ones, I kid you not. For those of you who have not had the time or inclination to check out the retail cost of one of these suckers, it's around $250. BRUTAL right, I know, I know, and that was exactly why I was high on the buy!!
Now for the wee little glitch. No food, no plates, cutlery etc. Well, I say no problemo! C'mon lets just hop in the car, hit up the Self-help (our local second hand store) and pick up some cheap plastic dishes, as for fake food, we happened to have some, and there is always more at the Dollarstore. (nothing but the best for my babies:)
So my son and I hop in the CRV and peel out of the driveway, hot on a mission to find some more deals. We get there and I gave my normal speech, "Now mind your manners, no yelling, and don't touch the breakables." After that we head in. Now you have to remember that my oldest is 4.5 yrs and VERY dramatic. Like memorizes and acts out the ShamWow and SlapChop commercials. Recites verbatim lines from his favourite Disney movies, as well as the Dempsters whole grains commercial. He is almost always "ON" unless asleep.
In we go, and Action: We are walking between the movie isles and male child#1 says, "hello stranger, hello stranger" to every single person that goes past us. Thus begins "the looks". (also notable mention: he is apparently unable to control the volume of his voice. He projects like a 90yr old with their hearing aid turned off so they yell even louder, like they think you can't hear either.) All of a sudden he decides to kick it into high gear and really get into character, so the next poor old man that walks past gets, "hi stranger" followed by,"oh mommy!! it's a stranger, hold me hold me!!" (insert mock scared child's voice) This guy looks over at me with the "I didn't do anything look" and then gets laced into by his wife,"Harry, what did you do to that little boy?! Stop being so scary! Dammit what'd ya say to him?" she grabs her husband and pulls him into the nearest isle to berate and interrogate him in private.
I say in a quiet voice,"Ahhhh, c'mon let's move, and look for those dishes." later I whisper, "maybe you could just say hi instead of hi stranger." His response,"well i don't know his name mom, and he is a stranger, so I can't talk to him to ask him, cause you told me not to talk to strangers. So what? what am I posta do here huh? you tell me."
Really? catch-22, so I deflected and we continued to make our way to the dish section.
A few steps later we found ourselves in the book section. (the scene here is this: me, my son, behind him an overweight middle aged man with bad skin and worse dandruff thumbing through an Oprah magazine and a older woman dressed very conservatively, with a ton of make-up and brilliantly white hair looking at gardening books) All of a sudden my son's little kid ears pick up on the sound of something ever so slight. His eyes widen and he raises his already loud voice, "Mommy???" he says, his voice laced with judgement and disapproval,"Did you just Fart!!!" I could instantly feel the heat in my cheeks as the man and woman turned to stare at me over their shoulders. "Ughhh, No. I did not." I say in a low voice. "Well who did?" He says. "Cause I heard it! Just now! And it wasn't me!!" I'm stifling a giggle and trying to be parental slash put the Kibosh on this line of questioning. "Um you know what, I don't think that's what you heard, I think that it was probably a chair leg squeaking on the floor or something, c'mon let's go." But he wouldn't be shrugged off that easily. "No way mom. It was a fart for sure!" then lifting up both thumbs and pointing in opposing directions at the individuals who at this point are staring right at us, he says, "If it wasn't us, then it had to be one of these guys!" Wellllll...now I guess everyone was embarrassed, because I've never seen two adults heads whip up, look accusingly at each other and then turn away and stare straight ahead at nothing that quickly before in my life.
At this point, I just turned my back and walked briskly to the household section, yelling over my shoulder, "See you later turtle,you're too slow, I'm leaving you here." and of course he ran after me like a bat out of hell.
why didn't I just do that in the first place? wow. Well at least I know for next time. We got in the car and had a talk about the importance of whispering in stores about all bathroom related matters.
This parenting thing is one crazy ride. The mundane can turn exciting within seconds without any notice. Beware.
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