>The Produce Man is Officially Dead to Me
>Yesterday was one of Those Days.
After 96 hours pent up in a snow-covered house with two wild children and one mopey teenager, I managed to finally break free from captivity and take the kids to a nearby indoor playcenter. Thirty minutes after our arrival, Punky hadn’t found any suitable playmates and was ready to go.
Um. No. “The fifteen dollars I just spent says we aren’t leaving after 30 minutes,” I told her.
“But Mommy, I can’t take it anymore,” Punky whined. “I just want to go home and drink water from our refrigerator and lie in my bed.”
“I’ve got a drink here for you and you can lie on that sofa over there,” I responded. “There’s no way I’m going to make Bruiser leave after thirty minutes just because you don’t want to play here anymore.”
Punky went to the sofa, lay down, stared at the playcenter’s ceiling and cried a few crocodile tears. After about ten minutes, she returned.
“I really can’t take it anymore,” she insisted. “I really, really want to go home. This is the horriblest day in the whole world ever.”
“Punky, the only way we can leave now is if you can convince Bruiser to go,” I said finally. I had given her an impossible errand, but Punky didn’t know that. She brightened and went off to find Bruiser, who was happily playing with about a hundred Hotwheels and a toy parking deck.
“Bruiser,” Punky said in her sweetest voice, “Want to go home now and play video games with me?”
Bruiser looked up at her and frowned. “Never!” he said darkly.
The next hour passed in that manner, with Punky finding Bruiser every quarter hour or so, begging him to leave, and then returning to me with tears in her eyes.
“He spitted at me,” she’d say. “I asked him if he was ready and he just spitted at me!”
“Okay, okay, okay,” I said finally. I couldn’t take it anymore. “Ask him if he wants to go to the grocery and push his own cart.”
“YES!” Bruiser said from across the room. His selective hearing powers were truly amazing. He ran over to us. “Coat, Mommy!” he demanded. Happily, both children got their coats on and ran for the car. A trip to the supermarket was a banner day as far as they were concerned. And total hell for me.
But! I only had five items on my list! It couldn’t be that bad, right?
Wrong.
As we entered the grocery, Punky chose a small cart for herself, while Bruiser opted to ride in a toy car attached to the front of a grocery cart. Unfortunately, the seat of the car was covered in snow.
“I ride in Punky’s cart,” he said, pointing at the child-sized cart.
“No,” I said.
“I ride in your cart,” he said, pointing at the basket of my cart.
“You have to ride in the seat of this cart,” I told him. “You can’t ride in the basket.” The wailing commenced.
“It’s okay, Bruiser,” Punky said. “You can help me push my cart!” The wailing ended. Bruiser and Punky stood side by side and pushed the cart together into the grocery.
“Awww, aren’t they cute?” A group of managers was standing at the front of the store with clipboards. They paused to watch Punky and Bruiser solemnly pass by. And that’s when all hell broke loose.
“No, Bruiser!” Punky said. “Stop pushing it into the wall!”
“WAAAAHHHH!” Bruiser shouted. He slapped Punky on the wrist and she recoiled. “WAAAAHHHHHH!” He commandeered the cart and ran with it, letting it go just in time for it to crash into a display of flowers.
The managers stood frozen while I grabbed Bruiser’s wrist and did the patented Mother Hiss. “Doyouwanttogohomerightnow (breath) sohelpmeifyoudon’tshapeup (breath) Iwillputyouinthenaughtycorner (breath) don’tyoudaredothatagain!” I said into his ear while he struggled mightily to free himself from my iron grip.
“Let’s let Bruiser push the cart for a while,” I told Punky. She slumped and shuffled along behind me while Bruiser pushed the cart. A minute later, he decided he was done pushing. That left me to bend over double and push the cart for both of them. Then Punky decided she wanted to push the cart again, which made Bruiser absolutely certain that he couldn’t go on living unless he pushed the cart– except that Punky wouldn’t let him. So he sat down in front of the cart and refused to move. The two began arguing.
At that point in time, I. Had had. Enough. I left Punky and Bruiser to squabble among the potatoes and onions and headed for the Produce section, a few dozen feet down the aisle. As I chose an avocado for dinner that night, I smiled at one of the produce workers, who was standing beside me sorting eggplants. It was a man I exchange pleasantries with almost every time I go to the grocery- but for some reason, on this day he didn’t acknowledge me.
Meanwhile, as expected, my sudden absence made Bruiser get up off the floor and run for me. Punky followed triumphantly with the grocery cart.
“Bruiser, you need to behave yourself,” I said sternly to him when he got to my side.
“I not!” he said murderously, his chin in the air. “I not ‘hayve myself! WAAAAAAARRRGGH!” I shuddered, instantly recognizing The Anti-Bruiser, a personality only displayed by my son on the rare occasions that he played too hard and skipped his afternoon nap. I looked over at Produce Man apologetically as his gaze met mine. “Someone needs a nap,” I said, smiling. He didn’t smile back.
“He was scared,” he said firmly. “The only reason he was upset was because he couldn’t see you and he didn’t know where you’d gone.” He shook his head and looked back down at his work. I stood there for a moment. My smile faded.
A thousand responses flooded my brain.
“Oh! Of course! You would know better than I would about how to handle the child I’ve spent NEARLY EVERY HOUR of EVERY DAY with for the last THREE FREAKING YEARS!”
“Of course! You’re right! I was SO WRONG to walk 30 FEET AWAY from my son in an EMPTY GROCERY STORE! I should have CODDLED him and BEGGED him to get up off the FLOOR instead, TO MAKE YOU HAPPY!”
“Well! Judgy McJudgerson! What is it about EGGPLANT that makes you an EXPERT ON CHILDREARING?!!”
Instead, I turned, bent over, and pushed my two-foot-tall cart away with as much dignity as I could muster. Sensing my agitation, my children followed in silence. “You are dead to me,” I hissed at the organic graham crackers as we walked. “I don’t care how many times you’ve gone in the back for me to get more clementines. I don’t care how neatly you stack the romaine. You, Produce Man, are dead to me. DEAD TO ME!”
Produce Man was relegated to the same vat of boiling oil in my mind as The Very Old Ice Cream Lady. I mean, I consider myself to be pretty open to criticism. You can tell me my lipstick is too red. You can make sure the word is out in Nashville and Los Angeles that I am not to be trusted. You can tell me that working from home isn’t even in the same realm as being a working mother. But don’t! Publicly criticize me! On how I’m handling my kids!
Or I will NEVER LISTEN TO YOUR RADISH RECOMMENDATIONS AGAIN!!!
