kiwords

I took the boys to Burger King for lunch today. Love that salty meat! As I got their food the boys went tearing off into the great big child habitrail play place. This particular BK has a huge one, a good two stories tall. By the time I came in with their daily serving of poor parenting choices, a kid was racing through the tubes hollering, “Run away from the evil Superman!”
Three guesses who the evil Superman was.
Raphael was indeed in his Shoopershirt, complete with red cape. I chuckled at him as he came flying out the end of the slide. “Two minutes and you’ve already earned the title ‘evil’, huh? That may be your personal best, baby.”
One of the other moms came over to my table as I was unwrapping and sorting various burger-like things. “I’m so sorry about that whole…evil Superman thing. That was my son.” Insert weary sigh here. “I never know what he’s going to say.”
Allow me to interject with an observation here. There are many mothers of only children who parent their one child with consistency and reason. There are many mothers who became mothers later in life (say, after age 40) who are also just wonderful moms all around. There are many who are in the subset of the two groups who are great mothers who have a handle on the needs and limitations of their one kid.
However, there is a group of moms out there who came to motherhood late and only have one child and are entirely unable to cope. I don’t know why. They seem eternally flummoxed by the fact that these small people behave so consistently child-like. It’s not that they don’t love their kids; it’s not even that they’re not capable moms. They just wear themselves out, trying to keep their kids from being kids.
Such was this mom, mother to Sam – age 4 1/2. Sam was a delight, a loud mouthed active little bundle of boy. I have a soft spot for that sort of kid. Sam’s mom must have apologized to me seventeen times in the 45 minutes we were there. That was when she wasn’t racing over to the tubes to shout anxious instructions to her boy (“Sam, say excuse me to the little boy. I think you bumped his knee.” As if. “Sam, don’t go up the slide, go down the slide! Down the slide, Sam! Sam, don’t go up, come down! The rules say don’t go up the slide!”).
Luckily, I had brought in my newspaper, so after the boys went to play I had something to roll my eyes behind. However, after a few minutes of watching me not shout any instructions to the boys, she started asking me questions.
“Three boys? Really?”
No, I thought, I have only a reasonable TWO boys. SHOOT! Did I collect an extra again?
What I said was, “Yup.”
She sighed and turned nervously back to watch the activity.
“How do you ever get them all out of there?”
“Well, I say, ‘boys come out now.’ And they do, except sometimes I have to crawl in and haul out the two year old. I had to with the other ones when they were two, and now they pretty much understand what I mean when I say ‘come out now.’”
Another heavy sigh.
Tre was playing a fun game where he was falling from one level of the climbing area to another, sort of like a marble sifting its way down through a ker-plunk game. He’s a solid wee boy, and it sounded very impressive. Sam’s mom turned to me, alarmed.
“Do you see what he’s doing?”
“Yup.”
Alarmed looks from me to him.
“Don’t you worry he’ll hurt himself?”
“I figure if it really hurts he’ll stop.”
Max approached Sam to see if he wanted to play. Sam, who had just started playing with someone else, loudly announced that fact. Sam’s mom winced and apologized to me. I shrugged.
“They’ll work it out, I’m sure.”
They did.
Well, the rest of the time went on much like this. She would be horrified or apologetic about something that was happening in the habitrail. I would shrug and read my paper. I’m sure she thinks I’m the worst sort of neglectful mother. Oh well.
I was so enjoying upsetting her with my calm that I particularly liked our leave-taking. Raphael had indeed made a dash for the innards of the play place when I announced it was time to go. I hauled him out and he started screaming. Although he’s much better today, screaming will cause him to cough. And he did. And then he gagged on his coughing (something that is sort of an issue for Raphael). I was talking to Sam’s mom at the time, and when he started gagging I knew what was going to happen. So without missing a beat I held my hand in front of his mouth and caught the wee handful of lunch that came back up. Orange soda too.
Under normal circumstances I might have gagged a little myself. But today I was enjoying her utter horror so much I just blinked and asked mildly, “Do you have an extra napkin?”
Every life has its perks.