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Apr 14, 2012

Desperate Public Parenting


The other day, Mylo parks the car, nods, and stretches his seat to catch a wink in what would be a half-wink chore for me - withdrawing money from the ATM. There was just one guy waiting and I with none of life's pressures on me, strolled to join him. Just then, a scooter stops somewhere behind me and I turn to find a mother-daughter duo. As I watch, the daughter jumps off the scooter, shares a look with her mother, and runs to take position behind the guy, while I was just two feet away from my destination. Now, that creature didn't have a purse, didn't look like she knew the full form of ATM, and was hardly half as tall as me. And as she was cementing two footprints, the mother casually parks her scooter, picks her handbag, and with the slowness of new born baby elephant rummages to find her ATM card.

As she reaches, what has now thankfully become a queue, the daughter energetically invites her and they share the position, casually waiting for their turn. Which-would-have-been-my turn! My turn! I stare at the mother to get an adult connection - nothing. As I was about to shape a retort in my head about queue etiquette, that two foot nuisance turns to give me a smirk.

I roar, "Hey, that's my place and you can't hold positions for your mother in a queue - like throwing a book in and reserving a seat on a busy bus! What are you, refugees? Oh, you need a dictionary for that, don't you?" 
"And you, you are being proud of your daughter cutting into a queue like that, when you clearly saw I was next! Shouldn't you be telling her what's wrong and what's right? Especially in public, towards strangers? You are setting a bad bad example for her. So get behind me or I'll chop her bloody ponytail off and kick your scooter down! "

But I didn't. Maybe it was something in my school anthem or the fact that I didn't have kids of my own, yet. So I waited my turn as I saw that two footer insist on entering the PIN and pull out the money. But as they exited towards their scooter, I glared at the mother's receding shadow wondering how our parents did it.