Things I said I'd never do

I had one of those moments today—the kind I swore I’d never have before I had kids and that used to invoke judgey thoughts about the mother whose kids were running amok.

I was on the way home from work, having just picked up The Boy at daycare. Typical after work routine is as follows: drive to daycare provider’s home, collect child, drive the four minutes home while multitasking, AKA HeyTelling friends, arrive home, remove work clothes and put on lounging garb, park booty on couch to nurse child and peruse social media sites.

The moment I drove by Walgreens I remembered I still hadn’t gotten DH a birthday card (um yeah, it’s today…happy birthday, babe). I fought the urge to keep driving, in spite of my fleece pajama pants beckoning me at home, and pulled into the lot.

“It’ll be super easy,” I told myself. In and out. No stroller, no cart, no Ergo needed. With The Boy on my hip I made a beeline for the card aisle as fast as my work-height heels could carry me.

So, I’m the kind of person who could spend 45 minutes looking for that perfect greeting card. I search, compare, hymn and haw. I scanned the categories looking for what I needed— “Husband Birthday” and “Birthday from Son.” I was picking up cards, reading for appropriateness, putting them back, and picking them up again, all the while carrying an oversized purse and a toddler who was becoming increasingly squirmy. And HEAVY. I decided to put him down—you know, just for a second—to rest my arm. The moment those little size 5 Stride Rites hit the ground I knew I’d made a grave error.

Within three seconds my son had two fists full of cards and envelopes and was ready to eat them for dinner. I dropped my purse and snatched the cards out of his hands (thankfully unscathed) to put them back. And of course, as I did that, he seized the opportunity to make a mad dash down the aisle. Living up to his title of “toddler,” he ran a few unsteady paces, stumbled, and did a belly flop onto the floor like a drunkard. I think he even slid a few inches on the slick floor.

Mind you, I was raised by a mother whose favorite words were “DON’T TOUCH!” I was never allowed to ride in a grocery store cart (some germophobe just like my mom probably invented the shopping cart cover) and she carried her own illness-free booster seat into restaurants for me to use. I was never to dream of touching a hand railing on a mall escalator (unless I was falling to my death…and even that was iffy) and riding on one of those grocery store carousels was out of the question. I was raised to believe public = dirty.

I scooped my kid up off the floor and he pulled the trademark back-arching, limp noodle move that I swear kids take some seminar to perfect, making it next to impossible to lift him. At that moment I caught a glimpse of us in that huge mirror that runs the length of the drugstore and realized that, oh dear GOD, I was one of those mothers whose child is throwing a tantrum all over the floor of a public place. And not only was my child on the floor, but so was I, and so was my Coach purse, its contents, and a dozen greeting cards. After all my smug years of shooting the side-eye to such spectacles, I was THAT woman.

I couldn’t help myself—I burst out laughing at myself and the ridiculously hilarious irony of the sight. I was still chuckling to myself as I thought about another thing I could never understand before: parents putting their child on a leash.

But hey, at least they look like backpacks/cute little stuffed animals nowadays, right?

…RIGHT?