I had a surge of energy the other day so the family and I decided
to take a walk to the park. I figured it would be a pretty relaxing day but it
turned into a test of my patience.
Ali had been playing nicely on the slides and decided she
wanted to play in the water fountain instead. There were two small boys playing
there already so I figured it was fine but Dan wasn’t really into it. Ali
headed over to the fun and just as she reached up to push the button this
little boy swatted her hand away.
At first I though: “Did he just touch her?” Maybe Ali
accidentally touched him and he was returning the favor? I couldn’t be sure so
I let it slide. Then Ali moved over to the other faucet and he swatted her hand
again. Oh No you didn’t! At this point I wanted to see what Ali would do in the
situation. I was secretly hoping she would punch him in the face and tell him
to get the hell off, but then remembered she really hasn’t had to much exposure
to punching, maybe she could karate kick him? Either way this boy needed to be
beat, and his parents, who were standing
three feet away, weren’t going to be the ones to give it to him.
Ali started whining after the second swat so I took her
aside and said, not too quietly, “Ali next time someone does that you scream as
loud as you can ‘Don’t touch me!” OK?’ With my hormones I’m lucky I didn’t
pepper that phrase a little more colorfully, like: “Get your goddamn hands off
me!” But cooler heads prevailed.
Ali headed back over and after ten seconds the little crap
swatted her hand away again. This time Ali went into a full on fit and we
decided it was best not to play by the fountains anyway. All the while his
parents were just sitting there chatting not worried that their son is an
asshole. Dan isn’t too big on confrontation but those parents got the wrong end
of his death stare - which is pretty intense coming from him.
What was his mother thinking? I’ll admit that if Ali swatted
someone once I would probably just ignore the first one and hope no one saw (I’m
only human) but if she swatted a second time you better bet
she’s getting a talking to. I’m not asking you to scream at the kid, but a
simple “Hey! Don’t touch” would have really helped the situation.
Am I supposed to
reprimand someone else’s child? I wanted to smack the kid across the face and
yell “How do you like it when strangers hit you?” Or at least smack the mother
for that matter. Sorry I’ve got enough to worry about with my own kids, I’m not
here to babysit yours. But my brand of parenting would be to kick him in the
shins. If you’re not happy with that kind of punishment I suggest you step in
next time and take care of the situation yourself.
My anger didn’t last long, not two minutes after we walked
away the kid fell an smacked his head on a bench. I’m not one to rejoice in
other’s pain but hey, Karma is a bitch.
No comments:
Post a Comment