Yesterday as I was leaving the local video store with the first two discs of season four of my latest addiction... "24", and LaLa with her copy of Bambi clutched in her her hot little paws, I noticed a woman walking into the store. I noticed her because she had about the same number and ages of kiddos with her that I usually do. I also noticed that as they were walking the short stretch of parking lot to get to the store that she said nothing to her passel of rugrats running figure eights and loopity-loop patterns like rabbits ahead of her. She was just tooling along with her baby on her hip, chill as can be. Don't get me wrong... you could see clearly that there were no cars coming, it was an area of parking lot that was impossible for cars to go even medium fast through, and the gamboling children really weren't more than three or four yards ahead of her...
Still.
You will never see me lax about parking lots. Ever. For me the parking lot, any parking lot, be it ever so small and innocuous, will never be a place I can relax with kids. I have in my head a loop of mental video of a driver just not being as careful as they could, and little babies like squished grapes in front of me. My girls and I will probably always navigate parking lots like they were Bosnian minefields. I am aware that this is not so much about my babies or safety, as it is just the thing I have chosen to be a freak about. My brain-freak.
I am still the woman who feeds popcorn to her baby. Yeah, I know... I KNOW! I don't hand it to her and just walk away. Noooo.... I make sure to be there to watch and encourage her to cough up that hard bit of hull, and to wipe away the nasty, slug sized goober off her chin when she does manage to hack it out.
I am still the mom who will stand there and chat with you as her baby kicks it on the play area wood chips, shoving in the pieces like they were off a chocolate sampler tray. I see you cringing, I am aware of what's going on... she has yet to swallow any, she just wants a taste.
Really, I'm a great mom.
5 comments:
Here I thought I was the only parent who has visions of their child looking like squashed grapes if they walk through the parking lot without holding my hand.
meee too! I'm a super-freak in parking lots - the rule is everybody has to hold a hand. Doesn't matter which hand, but they gotta.
I saw a kid running amok in a parking lot the other night, and I broke a sweat in my palms.
brr!
Isn't it funny how we all have our 'things'. Parking lots scare me too- but there are tons of other things that I'm totally lax on that probably freak out other moms.
I'd be a freak like that too. Besides wood and popcorn taste yummy.
yeah and my babies slather their saliva all over the shopping cart handle. GAG!Dry heave and move on.... LOL. Immune system builders I call them.
Parking lots are NO JOKE for us though.
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