bitchy mom | HOUSE*BANG*BOOM

Last night I was at the mall when I ran into someone who looked so familiar. We made eye contact and said, “I know you from somewhere.” [Pause, head cocked, brow furrowed.]

I got it! She was the girl who got pissed at me at the front desk of the YMCA when she mistakenly took me for the person who snaked her precious parking spot.

That episode happened about a year ago, and with arms full of kids, being in the first trimester, and feeling like I had to regain control of my life somewhere, I started with that girl who wrongfully told me off and I retaliated.

No b*tch slap. No yelling either. But there was swearing. And then there was crying.

* * *

This week as we were waiting for preschool to start, a gaggle of 4-year-olds (mine included) were running little circles at top-4-year-old-speed. I wasn’t bothered, because it was zero f*cking degrees outside and I figured they had to get the wiggles out somehow.

Just when I was admiring the giggly bunch, another mama yelled loud and at length at the kids to stop running. Her kid must have been angelically sitting on her carpet square waiting for class to commence. I can’t recall.

However, being the recipient of a foreign and harsh disciplinary action, my kid lost it. He ran to me crying, clinging to my legs, saying he didn’t like school anymore. I had to run out the door, leaving an anxious kid in the arms of the preschool teacher, disappointed that this happened.

When I picked him up from school a couple hours later, that yeller-mama asked if my kid cheered up about school, and I replied with a heavy dose of condescension, “He was shocked and hurt that you yelled at him to stop running. That’s not how we do it in our family.”

What I almost said was, “Do you even know how much self-control it takes me to not yell at this kid?!? And then you go and waste a good yell on a little ring-around-the-rosie?!? B*tch, please.”