The Blogfathers

As I type this, I am sitting in a cafe in Park Slope reading online erotica working, and there are these two women sitting across the cafe from me. One has an infant. The other has a toddler. The woman with the toddler is letting her child run ALL OVER THE CAFE SCREAMING HER UGLY TODDLER FACE OFF.

I may not have a toddler yet, but I am pretty sure what I will not do when my child becomes a toddler. I will not let her run ALL OVER CAFES SCREAMING HER UGLY TODDLER FACE OFF.

This child is climbing on top of tables, knocking salt shakers over. This wretched little girl is running up to the cookie display case and pounding on it, screaming. This feral monkey kid is following one beleaguered waitress around hooting and asking “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” response: “Sweetie, I am cleaning.” “WHY?” “Because the tables need to be cleaned.” “WHY?” “Because they are dirty!” Not said: “Because you keep spilling crap everywhere, you rabid imp.”

Oh for the love of Mike, make her stop!

Mom, meanwhile, is chatting away with her nursing friend, content to have a cafe filled with unwitting babysitters to monitor her monster … even though they’d prefer to kill Mom and her toddler and everyone in their extended family. We’re all exchanging eye-rolls that say “You want to stick them in the espresso machine too, right?” Mom just asked someone at the table next to her for the time and, miraculously, instead of stabbing her to death with the jagged bits of a shattered salt shaker, they gave it to her!

The kid just took her shoes off and plopped them on someone’s table.

The beleaguered waitress just tidied up some of the toddler’s path of destruction. The mom just said “Oh, I was going to do that before we left. Thanks.”

I am filled with a cancerous soul-destroying tar-black sticky rage that I think has just poisoned my left kidney. I need to unplug and leave before committing multiple homicide.

But I am fascinated.

Mom with the infant just packed her baby up and is preparing to leave, hinting mercifully at the fact that mom with the toddler might follow suit (and, dare I dream?, perhaps leave her child behind for us all to spit-roast). Alas, though, mom with the toddler has made no moves to collect her shoeless table-climbing alphabet-shouting salt-spilling maniac kid. Mom looks at her friend, who now has her infant well swaddled and contained, and says “Ah, parenthood.”

Uh, excuse me, ma’am? But I haven’t seen you DO ANYTHING EVEN REMOTELY RESEMBLING PARENTING.

Ah! Case in point: Her toddler, whose name I have just learned is Emma and not, in fact, Illness, has just upended the entire contents of a sugar container all over a table.

Mom has just grabbed Emma and said “Oh, we don’t do that. It’s time for us to get going, honey.” She puts Emma down. And, surprise!, Emma runs off to someone else’s table.

OK, Emma has been roped in. Emma is getting her shoes put on. Emma is leaving. Emma is gone.

And me? I am ordering a round of drinks for everyone in the house.

Man. I hate other people’s kids. Not yours, though. Definitely not yours.

Spring Cleaning, Other People's Parenting