Well, the day started out fine…
We had a great, easy Saturday morning: I made breakfast, my wife slept late, handed me the sheets, I did the laundry while she dusted, and eventually we made it out to shop for a bunk bed set for the girls. The furniture store experience was fairly pleasant, as the kids were easily distracted.
Then, we went to Target. On a Saturday afternoon. What WERE we thinking?
The little one needed a nap and she had not taken one by the time we arrived in the parking lot. She was woozy, but stubborn. She insisted on walking through the lot instead of getting in the stroller. When she realized that all the shopping carts were wet with rain, she settled for the stroller – for about five minutes. I tried to wheel her around to keep her from getting too out of hand, but my wife stopped me. She said she’d take care of the girls while I looked for a pair of shorts to get me through the next few weeks while I’m still fat.
The energy level at Target was really bad. Lots of angry moms and impatient dads and whiny children. I don’t know if there was a soul in the place that was happy. I could feel this as I tried on pair after pair. I knew that this was not the place to be. My wife was also hungry, and we should have gone to a restaurant in the plaza, but I had thought that we needed to get our little one to sleep. While I was on line my wife went over to the little café in Target, and was deciding on lunch when the little one says she has to go potty. Thank goodness she actually SAID this instead of just going. I paid for the stuff, they went to the restrooms, and by the time I paid they were on line at the food counter.
It was crowded, crazy, and people kept bumping into one another. It’s a good thing the chairs were bolted down. The kids meal was supposed to come with a book; it did not. My wife complained while I tried to calm myself down. The girls were relatively okay but I did not like that they kept getting in and out of their seats.
I had held on to a packet of fruit snacks that came with the kids meal. It was time to open it up, and I gave some to each. My oldest whined, “ hey, she has all the red ones and I don’t!”
That’s when I lost it.
I said out loud, very sarcastically, “life is SOOOO unFAIR, isn’t it?? How unjust it is!”
That’s when my wife lost it. She packed up what was left of the meal, threw it out, and took the kids back to the car, in the rain, while I struggled to catch up, with the stroller and the shopping bags.
Later we talked about what had happened, and it was just one of those moments where everything works to create an explosion. I’d been trying very hard to stay calm, because I knew my wife was upset, and I just could not stop myself. The nice thing about life is that there are erasers on pencils. Sunday morning we celebrated our anniversary (one day early) with breakfast while the girls hung out at my sister-in-law’s around the corner. And we won’t be taking anyone shopping on a Saturday afternoon for a while!