The Bratty Child
I can’t stand kids.
They’re annoying. Children expect the littlest accomplishment to have the loudest praise. The time consumed by them. The events they stop you from attending. They never shut up, whether it is yapping like a little dog, incessant, or screaming about something they didn’t get.
I’m not a total asshole. I can acknowledge the kids out there who are great. Respectful, conscientious, responsible, etc.
But unfortunately, they are out-shined by the dinks they call their peers.
Sorry kids, life isn’t fair.
I think I can’t stand children because I see myself at their age when I look at them. Minus the screaming at home or in public, I was guilty of everything else.
My mother fixed that shit show in an instant.
I loved the public. I loved seeing everything. I loved the interaction.
So when I decided in my tiny toddler brain to pull a banshee scream, my mother never missed a beat.
She abandoned the cart, sorry to the poor schmuck who found it and had to put it all away.
She marched out the front doors of the store.
She went to her car and opened the door with a flourish.
IN I went, strapped into the car seat and all.
Shut the door and wait out the banshee child.
I vaguely remember that event, looking out the window at her, my screams silenced by the shock of sitting in a car alone with no one to be irritated by my tantrum.
That treatment only had to be implemented twice, and I learned tantrums were unacceptable. I was one of the best-behaved kids where ever we went.
Kudos to you, mom.
Another escapade, where my self-inflated image tried to conquer the adult, didn’t turn out the way I planned.
A tantrum at home ended with me threatening to call the police on my mother.
How dare she tell me, a three-year-old, what to do! The audacity!
Conveniently, there was a phone right there by my hand on the table. My mother picked it up and handed it over.
“Go ahead,” She baited. “Call them. 9–1–1.”
Even though I knew my numbers, she pointed to which buttons to press. Perhaps, it was for dramatic effect?
It worked, since twenty-seven years later, I still remember that moment.
So, the little fucker tried a different tactic.
I don’t know. Should I have gotten an A+ for effort or resilience?
“I’m going to run away!”
Again, my dear mother. “Go ahead; there’s the door.”
She didn’t give me time to analyze her permission before she whisked me to the front door and pushed me out onto the stoop.
“And don’t think you’re taking anything with you because I bought it.”
Door shuts.
She knew I wasn’t going anywhere, and we lived in an association at the time, so there were no serial killers lurking around the corner.
She watched me from the slider as I trudged part way down the sidewalk, looking back at the door every few steps.
Then, there was a pitiful knock on the door.
I knew when to accept defeat.
If you think that three-year-old learned her lesson, you’d be wrong. She tried it again six years later.
My mother works for a family telecommunication business. Everyone is related by blood except us though we might as well be family twenty-five years later.
Again, nine-year-old me impulsively yelled, “I’m running away!”
Without a beat, my mother, the office manager, got up from her chair in the shared office space.
“Ok. There’s the door!”
Out I went, door shut behind me.
Inside, one of the sons of the employer was horrified.
“I can’t believe you just did that.”
I stomped down the stairs; they could see me on camera.
My mother. “She’ll be back.”
Sure enough, she spotted my shadow under the door, peeking — a nine-year-old who didn’t understand the Laws of Reflection.
My shadow angled in front of the blazing sun.
Idiot.
Again, that pitiful knock.
Defeat once more.
I’m sorry.
I won’t do it again.
And this time, I didn’t.
