A Run-in With The Parent Police
©Lisa Barker
(An excerpt from Lisa Barker’s book Just Because Your Kids Drive You
Insane…Doesn’t Mean You Are A Bad Parent!)
There I was in the middle of the bra aisle with the three-year old and
two-year old in tow. I’d played it smart. I had both children
strapped into a shopping cart of their own. I had them parked out of range
of the merchandise.
I knew my size. I deftly hunted for the appropriate color, whisked it
into a cart and weaved my way from women’s lingerie to skivvies for
the kiddies.
It was looking as if my underwear mission would soon be Mission
Accomplished, but no.
Along the way I noticed this strange trail of plastic cards. “Hmm.
 That looks just like…my ATM card! My credit card! My driver’s
license!â€
Grinning like a happy hamster, my two-year old demonstrated how the
contents of my wallet had been strewn along like a plan Hansel and Gretel
had hatched to help Mommy find her way back to the bra department by
smoothly tossing the little important slips of paper and money in my
purse up in the air like confetti.
Of course, I knew my priorities. I immediately abandoned my kids as I
desperately tried to collect all my most important personal and
financial tokens. You’d think I was a mad woman on a treasure hunt in the
aisles of unmentionables.
Satisfied that I had retrieved all my things before my identity could
be stolen, I returned to my children only to discover a ‘helpful’
fellow shopper standing there to inform me that my two-year old had stood
up in his seat.
It was as if she thought I’d just decided to park my kids in the
middle of nowhere and stroll off to browse and have a jolly good time.
Parenting Police are convinced that you should have never had children
to begin with. They will shake their heads and cluck their tongues,
offer you unsolicited advice about birth control or state the obvious.
“Your child is running through the aisles.â€
“You mean this isn’t Disneyland?â€
“Is it naptime?â€
“No, they always scream like this.â€
“You must have your hands full.â€
“No, I just like to drop bottles of milk on the floor to see how fast
it takes the clerk to call out, ‘Wet spill in aisle three!’â€
“Your son has a potty mouth.â€
“My husband and I think self-expression is $%#&*@ GOOD for them.â€
“These children are all yours?â€
“So that explains why they keep following me home!â€
Well, we made it to the checkout without anybody calling Child
Protective Services. At least for now, sarcasm isn’t viewed as parental
incompetence.
LISA BARKER of Greenfield is a syndicated humor columnist and mom of
five. Her latest book is “Just Because Your Kids Drive You Insane …
Doesn’t Mean You Are A Bad Parent!” See www.JellyMom.com for more
information.
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P.S. Ladies, I absolutely love Lisa’s “Just Because Your Kids Drive You Insane … Doesn’t Mean You Are a Bad Parent!” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again … Lisa is a talented writer with a sense of humor that only a mom can really understand! Check out www.JellyMom.com and pick yourself up a copy.
Your fellow WAHM in success,
Anita
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