Disclaimer: I’m not perfect. I know I’m not, it’s one of my least favorite things about myself (along with my eyes that cross easily and very poor time management skills, but that’s a different post.)
Sometimes, I judge. I know we’re not supposed to. But last week, I did, and the incident that prompted it has had me stewing ever since.
I was at one of those places where you pay to play with your kids, and they run all around and bounce off the walls. Usually, they make my teeth hurt, but this one is actually quite roomy and well run. But, since it was a rainy day, it was filled to the gills.
There was a mom there with three children under the age of five, and a cell phone glued firmly to her ear. For the two and a half hours that we played, she never once hung it up. If one of her children pulled a toy from another child (which did happen- lord knows mine do it, too) she would scream from across the room, “GIVE THAT BACK!” and go back to her conversation.
Her children wandered, trying to engage with other adults, since their own mom was ignoring them. Her little boy perched perilously on a ball, yelling, “Looka me! Looka me!” She didn’t.
Her daughter came up hopefully to me and said, “At the end is the bubble party! The bubble party is my favorite!”
“Yes,” I assured her. “The bubble party is fun.”
About ten minutes before the bubble party, the little girl fell off of the monkey bars. She fell onto a pad, but hit her foot on a pole on the way down and was crying. Since I was standing right there, I crouched down and asked, “Are you OK?” She whimpered and nodded. “The bubble party is soon,” she sniffed.
“HOLD ON!” I heard loudly by my ear, as Cell Phone mom switched ears. “If you can’t behave, we’re leaving!” she shouted at the little girl, and pulled her up by one arm.
“She just fell…” I said, somewhat baffled by being ignored completely. She held up a hand at me, and said to the phone, “Wait a sec, I just have to get them out of here…” The little girl began wailing, as the mother pulled her towards the door, yapping angrily to the other end of the line all the way, collecting her two boys in her wake.
I watched, furious, as she shoved her children onto benches in the lobby and jammed their shoes on their feet. The little had resorted to silent tears, dripping resolutely down her face, as though she knew they wouldn’t be heard and would do no good.
I waved to her while I debated the merits of trying to tell the mom that the kid had been talking about the bubble party for two hours. That it would just take a minute. I felt a boiling heat rise in my chest as I watched her smack her son’s leg, phone cradled lovingly on her shoulder, because he squirmed too much. And I didn’t go to her, as I was pretty sure I would wind up getting myself into a fair amount of trouble.
Then they were gone. I talked to the owner, who said they had a no cell phones policy, and that she had mimed to the mom to put it down several times, only to get the hand I was shown as well. I heard other moms say things during the two hours, like “Where’s his mom? OH- THE ONE ON THE PHONE.” But she did nothing.
I guess the phone was just the technology she used to ignore her children-maybe in a different decade, it would have been an 8 track, or a Sony Walkman. Maybe she was negotiating some life or death deal. But I kinda sorta thought she just didn’t want to be present, and thought she paid her ten bucks and got to check out. I don’t know.
But I keep seeing that little girl’s face, tears flowing, as the thing she had been looking forward to was removed not even out of malice, but out of ignorance. And it makes me sad for her- and mad. Really, really mad.
What would you do? Chalk it up to a mom having a bad day, and try to keep her kids out of trouble, or have a difficult conversation that may have escalated pretty quickly? I feel like I wussed out.
Check out the Loretta Lynn/Jack White song, “Trouble on the Line”- it’s a favorite.:)
|
Twitter links powered by Tweet This v1.8.3, a WordPress plugin for Twitter.
Comments (16)