The Child who owns the World, but ONLY in Public

Have you ever had an experience with one of your children that caused the blood to drain from your face? The kind of experience that encourages you to strongly reconsider taking said kid out in public for fear of social ruin?  Well, for all of you who have been there...or are there...this is the tale of the kid, the granny, and the horrified mother...enjoy!

I love Costco.  Every trip to Costco is delightful for me.  There is something about buying in bulk that puts a smile on my face.  A few weeks back, I took my wild brood of 3 to Costco to restock on diapers, and toilet paper, and (of course) to buy a 5lb bag of M&Ms.  As always, we turned down the book isle to peruse children's books...Peniel takes this particular part of the Costco experience very seriously.  Its the only moment in any given shopping trip where she is honed in and focused.  Peniel is the kid who hangs off the side of the cart and hollers at people in a British accent as we roll on by...but not in the book isle, never in the book isle.  We were rapidly approaching the children's book section so Peniel jumped off the side of the cart and started walking down the isle brushing her hand along the stacks of books.  She stopped short of her destination, for there was a road block in the form of a silver haired woman looking at the book on the first stack of children's books, I assumed Peniel would just go around...I assumed wrong.  Peniel wedged her way in between the woman and the stack of books and put her hands on her hips, and started tapping one of her feet.  The woman looked down and said hello to my darling sweet Peniel...Peniel looked up, and in a voice that sounded a few octaves lower than her usual whimsical sing song voice she said, "GET. OUT. OF. MY. WAY"
It all happened so fast, so very fast.  It was like watching an avalanche.  I was mortified, frozen in horror.  I reached out and grabbed her and told her to apologize...as the bewildered older woman walked off, I wanted to yell out, "she didn't learn that from me!"  As the woman turned the corner and was gone, I gave Peniel the most serious whisper scolding I could muster...which means very little to a child who knows the power they wield in public places...I shopped a little faster that day, took fewer samples, and forgot to buy half the things I needed to buy...all because my child owned the world that shopping trip, and me, the pheasant, could do very little...but the moment we got home, the world was right again, mommy was queen...and rudeness is high treason in Mommy's Kingdom.


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