Being pregnant is like being a hot girl at a Star Trek convention. People
stare at you, try to touch you and tell you lots of weird stuff that you don’t
want or need to hear. Once you have the baby, public interest in you
intensifies, although now it’s your baby getting all the attention. Except for
when the baby is acting up, in which case the majority of the attention is back
on you and it’s a lot more judge-y than when you were preggers. Actually, even
when your baby isn’t acting up, people still manage to find all kinds of
surprising ways to judge you, usually on days when you are already close to
diving under the covers with a bottle of wine and a straw.
I’ve had my fair share of these incidents in the year and a half since I
became a parent and apparently came under the watchful eye of the entire world. Unfortunately for me, I
never seem to come up with any intelligent or witty responses during said
incidents. I’m usually too busy feeling embarrassed or utterly stunned by
someone else’s asshole-ish-ness. I end up spending 4,763,871 countless
hours pondering what I could have and should have said. Since this takes up so
much of my time, I figured I would share some of these experiences with you so I
could at least tell someone what it
is I really wish I had said.
To the grandmother who told me to be firm and not always give
in:
Thanks for the tip. I even agree with you. Sometimes you need to remember who
the adult is and who the child is. But when it comes to whether my daughter sits
in the orange or the white highchair at the food court, I don’t really care. So
what if Thumper whined and pointed passionately at the orange one, shouting
‘Ojah! Ojah!’ when I tried to put her in the white chair? She apparently
preferred the orange one. Big deal. Another lesson in parenting, which I am
exercising right now with you, lady, is to pick your battles. If the orange one
was taken already, then yes, I would have asserted my role as the parent and
informed her that it wasn’t possible to sit in that particular chair, that she’d
either have to wait or use another one. But since there was no one around and
the coveted orange chair was available, then why would I engage in what likely
would’ve been an epic battle for the sole purpose of asserting my power over my
kid? I appreciate the sentiment and the fact that you're not sneering at me but
I can still hear the condescending tone behind your polite words. So let’s make
a pact right here and now. You don’t talk to me about parenting again and I
won’t kick you in the box. Deal?
To the elderly man who yelled at me in the doctor’s office:
You are a mean person. And no, I will not “get that thing [soother] OUT of
her [Thumper’s] mouth.” Firstly, you don’t know me. You don’t know my parenting
style just by looking down your snotty nose at me and seeing a soother in my
child’s mouth. Come down off your high horse and treat me like the human being I
am. Secondly, other than when she’s sleeping, I only give Thumper her soother in
emergency situations. Case in point, trips to the doctor’s office because my kid
hates the doctor’s office like I hate strapless bras. Which is A LOT. But you
wouldn’t know that because you’re too busy being a Judgemental Jack. You have no
idea the kind of misery we have suffered because of that clown operation
doctor’s office. Or maybe you do, because you were leaving as I was entering
and maybe your doctor was as much of a moron as mine was* and you had just spent
an hour and a half being berated and judged just like I was about to be. But
that doesn't give you the right to take your anger out on me. And for the
record, after leaving the most unpleasant routine check-up in the history of the
world, I didn’t yell at, reprimand or judge anyone based on situations I knew
nothing about.
To the woman who judged me at the play center:
Listen, you Judy Attitude-y with the mocking eyes, read the above post. I
only give Thumper her soother in emergency situations. And today, being at the
playgroup qualifies as an emergency because if she throws
one.more.tantrum I am going punch someone in the face and then
start rocking in the corner while humming my happy song- which is Since U Been Gone, by the way. So before
you roll your eyes at me again, maybe you could play nice for a minute, strike
up a conversation and figure out that the reason my kid is sucking on a pacifier
is not actually because I’m an inferior parent but because I am desperate for
some peace and quiet. Or don’t strike up a conversation, I don’t care. Just stop
rolling your eyes and thinking that you’re better than me or I will punch you in the face and you’ll be the one rocking in the corner
singing your happy song.
There. *sigh* I feel much better
now. I am also starting to identify with how Katie Holmes must feel.
I’m not going to pretend that I’ve never judged anyone. I’m so good at it
that I was once part of a team of expert people judgers. We were called Team
Judgement. However, all of this has taught me an important lesson. Although we
might think we have something valid to say, unless you know the context of the
situation you will just come off sounding like an asshole. It’s almost always
better for you to keep quiet. And as Justin Timberlake so aptly put it, what
goes around, goes around, goes around, comes all the way back around. So the
next time you feel a case of the judgies coming on, just remember what the Fresh
Prince of Bel-Air would tell you to do. Yo, back up! BACK UP! Mine ya bizness,
that’s all. Juz.mine.ya.biz.ness.
*This doctor is not the
one referenced in Curse
of the Picky Eater. This is the sucky-pants, worst doctor in the history of
ever that caused me months of stress and ultimately resulted in me having to
find another practitioner. Which of course is the one mentioned in my other
post, also known as the awesome-sauce, greatest doctor in the history of ever.
More on that later.
-Alice
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