The Thing About Other People’s Kids

Tonight I was talking with a friend.  It wasn’t a new or unique conversation, by any means, and, as the vast majority of the conversations I have with friends currently in the exact stage of life, marriage, and child-rearing as I am do, this one focused on our kiddos.

So there we were, looking pale, bleary, and exhausted, with our painted on smiles.  Both of us were white as sheets, but we’d taken the time to put on lip gloss before heading out to Bible study.  Somehow, we women subscribe to the myth that lip gloss makes us look slightly more awake and slightly less haggard.  Maybe to a non-experienced observer it does…

Maybe, when we’re running to Food Lion at 10 PM because we just realized that we were out of bread for lunches tomorrow, and out of milk, and out of pre-packaged, GMO laden, sugary desserts to put with our children’s squishy lunchbox offerings, because we’re just too danged tired to slice an apple and sprinkle lemon juice and cinnamon on it… maybe someone we know will be perusing the bread or milk, and will miraculously look put together, and because we have lip gloss on, they’ll think we are put together too.

Or maybe it just reminds us that we’re alive, so that we don’t scare the crap out of ourselves when we glance in the bathroom mirror before heading to bed.

But I digress…

Get used to it.

It happens more often than not.

“Are you ok?” I asked.

Obviously she was ready to strangle the general population, or curl up in a ball and sleep right there, on one of the long church fellowship hall tables.

But I asked anyway.

“Yeah – I just… the kids were screaming their heads off at each other in the car on the way home.  Sometimes I just don’t even know what to do.  I just wish we could be one of those families… those families that don’t have fighting kids in the back of the car all the time.  They fight in the car, they fight when they’re playing.  They even get into huge fights over who gets to say the blessing at dinner.”

“You aren’t alone.” I said. 

Inside I was cheering and doing cartwheels, just a little, because it’s always nice to know that your children aren’t the only ones who sound like they want to kill each other on a regular basis – even over something as sweet as saying a prayer.

[On a side note, my youngest daughter was crying hysterically last night after she had been safely tucked in to her nice warm bed, in her nice warm pajamas, in her very clean, cozy room.  Hysterically…  Sobbing to the point that I looked at my husband in a panic and ran up the stairs like I was actually trying to burn calories.

Was she sick? Was she hurt?  Was she scared?

No.  None of the above.

She was in raucous tears because her sister had started humming while she was trying to say her bedtime prayers.

I was incredibly sympathetic, and told her that the only time I wanted to hear her crying in such a manner EVER again was if there was a dire emergency, like a fire, or she was being kidnapped, and to go to sleep NOW.

My adrenaline was in a bit of a tizzy at that point.]

But back to my friend, I tried to placate her, with a very short rendition of our own afternoon. (As follows…)

There was a large pile of Beverly Cleary “Ramona” books on the coffee table in the living room.  There were many more things on the coffee table as well – all of which had magically matriculated there, seemingly overnight.  Now that the girls have gotten older, I have been drawing their attention more and more to situations which give me the opportunity to say “if everyone in this family did… that… what would happen?”

“If everyone in this family shoved their dirty socks under the coffee table or between the couch cushions…”

“If everyone in this family spilled half a box of Rice Krispies on the floor and didn’t sweep it up…”

“If everyone in the family decided to not replace the roll of toilet paper…” <- this one is futile, just for the record…

“If everyone in the family draped their coat, books, purses, toys, wii remotes alllll over the living room and kitchen table and in the office and left them for someone else [ME] what would happen?…”

I get a lot of blank stares.

I pray that one day it’ll click.

So back to the pile of Ramona books…

Daughter N usually pulls this stunt, so I called her to the living room. 

“You need to put these books away if you aren’t using them anymore.” (And they quite obviously were not being used…)

“J was the last one looking at them. She was using them.”

“J - come pick these books up – don’t leave them for someone else to clean up.”

So Daughter J comes in, and moves them to the shelf UNDER the coffee table, and looks up at me innocently…

“That’s where I found them.”

I called Daughter N back into the room. 

I also called Daughter A, even though I knew she had nothing at all to do with the situation – just to be fair.

“One of you put these books here.  Who was it?”

*Deer-in-the-headlights-stares

“I don’t care who took them out, but they need to be put back on the bookshelf in the office right now.  It’s not my responsibility to clean up after you, and it’s no one else’s responsibility either.  If you took them out, all you have to do, is put them back.”

At this point I dismissed A, after confirming that she hadn’t read those books, or looked at them, in probably years.

N and J decided to start arguing over who had taken them out.

“I didn’t bring them out here.”

“Well I found them out here.”

“Well I never touched them, I don’t know how they got out here.”

At which point I was more than a little PO’d, because ALL I wanted was for someone to cart the small pile of books back down the hall to the bookshelf, which would have taken maybe 5 seconds – and now it had turned into a huge festival of tall tales – maybe not on the scale of Paul Bunyan, but close enough.

“I’m giving you THREE seconds to tell me who brought them out here and start carrying them back to the bookshelf.  ONE of you brought them out here.  I know it wasn’t Dad or me!  The dog doesn’t read Beverly Cleary.  I know we don’t have magical little book-reading fairies unshelving our books, and hiding them in strategic piles in the living room.  They didn’t miraculously appear under the coffee table.  SOME one put them there.  Start remembering which one of you it was, NOW.”

Blank stares.

More - “well I don’t know how they got out here” statements.

Now, there are a few things that I cannot and do not tolerate in our household, and one of them is lying.

We aren’t fans of corporal punishment, and have given the girls no reason to be afraid to tell us the truth.  Plus, they know from past experiences that lying to us will land them in a HEAP of trouble, while telling us the truth means they will be given a punishment, but with a whole lot of grace thrown in… 

So basically at this point I was livid.

I still, to this very minute, have no idea who took the books out, though Daughter N had a Ramona book opened, and book-marked, on another cabinet altogether in the kitchen, which I found just minutes after the “stack of books” incident was over.  And considering that of the two, she’s the only one who can actually read… not to mention other such incidences, I have my strong suspicions...  But there still was not sufficient evidence. 

Cue the family meeting in which I was on the verge of total tearful meltdown, while ranting on the subject of earning trust, privileges, responsibilities, etc.

So when I told my friend “you’re not alone”, it may have sounded trite. 

But it wasn’t.

Because the thing with other people’s kids is that they pull the same stunts yours do.  And if they don’t pull the exact ones, then they have their own little circus routine, designed specifically to drive their parents batty. 

The thing with other people’s kids is that they refuse to poop on the freaking potty too. 

They throw their plate of mac-n-cheese on the floor (ceiling, wall…) too.

They kick their sister when they think no one is watching.

They say snarky things to their siblings under their breath, OR they scream snarky things to their siblings at a decibel that should be used only for the purposes of warning an entire city of an impending tsunami.

We’re all in this parenting thing together.

We ALL have felt at different points that we really really really are going to lose our mind before the day is out, no exaggeration.

Or we’ve felt like we’ve screwed it all up irreparably already – that the character traits they have at the ripe old age of 9 are set in stone and we’re doomed… doooooooommmmmed.

So - the next time you see that family of 16 kids in walmart.  You know – that family whose kids are holding on to the side of the cart calmly, without trying to steal rides on the edge and almost knocking it over, not blocking on-coming cart traffic, not climbing on top of the toilet paper vats just because they’re “fluffy”, not “checking” the eggs for cracks while you grab a box of butter 2 inches away, not dragging their sister out of the cart by her nearly-dislocated arm, not secretly hiding $5 dvds and candybars under the Great Value Kleenex and boxes of instant oatmeal, not screaming because their sippy cup is empty – or dripping the sippy cup down 8 aisles in a “Hansel and Gretel” stunt before you finally notice…

Just remember …

It’s obviously because they’re drugged.

And the next time you see the family with kids doing everything else on the list, just smile at their mother, and then look the other way – because it’s probably me.

-R.