PEOPLE'S STARES

Shopping with children can be many things. When the children are boys ages 2 and 3¾ (the ¾ being a VERY important distinction to when he was only JUST 3) it mostly ranges from very painful to semi-painless, and seems to fluctuate in respect to how many snacks I’ve packed. Now, the rare times my husband joins us for a ‘family shopping moment’, he seems to think that the looks the other people are giving him in the store, when our kids are acting up or lying down in the middle of the isle, are ones of love for little children and how cute and adorable they are. He’s probably right. When HE is with the boys. He has that “good guy” look that makes you like him instantly, and the boys look just like him, so something about the daddy and mini-me combination just makes other people “ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, isn’t that cute”.

Now when I am at the store with the boys, and they are yelling or running down the isle in front of other people’s carts (this is all hypothetical of course), I believe I get very different looks. Are you ever tempted to pretend to be the babysitter and say really loudly: “If you don’t sit still I’m going to tell your mother what you did.”? Sigh. I would if I could get away with it.

I have a Scottish friend (who happens to have very light coloured hair) who married a man from South Africa, and they have a beautiful daughter who happens to be the spitting imagine of her very dark father. One day when my friend’s daughter was young, she gave a full-fledged screaming, arms-flailing tantrum in the middle of the shopping mall. Now THEN, if I was my Scottish friend, I would be saying to other bystanders “I don’t know where that girl’s mother is, but she needs to come deal with this child” – and then fade away into the background.

The hardest part for me is that when my kids are acting up, for the most part I find them extremely entertaining, especially when they sing loudly (some might call it screaming, actually most people would call it screaming) and make each other laugh – even in public. So, should you come across my two little blondies running and yelling through the store, my apologies, but gosh, that’s just funny stuff.