Tantrums

Have you ever been to a grocery store?  Have you ever seen a lady that looks normal but you know she has to be crazy because she brought five little monkeys dressed in children’s clothing? You know that lady?  That lady is my wife.

When I come home from work and I see a trail of spilled produce from the minivan to the front door and shredded grocery sack plastic scattered all over the lawn, I know that I did indeed marry a crazy woman.  I know she’s crazy because as soon as I walk through the door she tells me that she took all the kids grocery shopping and they were terrible. At which point I’m thinking, “Duh.”

Apparently she thought that this trip would be different from the previous four thousand trips where the kids were terrible in the grocery store.  She thought this would be the day when reason and calm finally seeped into their little sugared up heads and they would behave like normal people.

I keep telling her kids aren’t normal people.  I keep telling her to wait until I get home and she can go shop all by herself or, worst case scenario, I go with her.  But the crazy lady has to do it her way and try to keep track of eight little hands grabbing ramen, gum, dried pineapple, escargot shells, spaghetti noodles, raw fish, lemon heads, and $25 bottles of wine.

We have good kids.  Sure they’re still kids and they do the normal kid stuff, but for the most part, they are pretty neat people.  I mean, I really like them. And I think its good for a father to like his kids.

But when you take them into a store, especially a grocery store, something happens.  I don’t know if any studies have been done but I would venture to say that there is a chemical in the brain of children, storaphoze or hypershopstaphin, that is released by shiny linoleum and tall aisles with bright packages.  This stuff makes my kids forget all the brainwashing, I mean manners, that we have spent years teaching them.

They get in that store and all five of them start heading in different directions. Once you get them rounded up again you parade them through the place yelling like a cattle herder: “Hya! Don’t touch that.  Wooe! Put that back. Ho! Come on back hear little doggie. Ya! Don’t bite the stock clerk! Com’on now.”

So the whole store knows that you’re shopping with kids and you are obviously a terrible parent because they are running all over the place and you can’t keep them under control.

And then the thing happens that you knew would happen.  The thing that you have been dreading since you walked through the door.  One of them sees an item they have just now decided is key to their continued existence. “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, can we get new beef jerky flavor soda pop?”  And you have to say no. And then it comes. All the bones in the child’s body melt at once.  You don’t even see her decent to the floor.  One second she is standing.  The next second she is on the floor with no will to continue living.  Just a sobbing, hysterical pile of kid.

Upon realizing that this is not going to get her the sugar, caffeine or booze containing item she so desires, the young strategist decides that her argument lacks volume and movement.  So limbs and lungs kick into high. The verbal abuse starts with things like “You never buy us anything we want. You only care about yourself.” Or, our favorite, “You don’t even like us, you only have us because Grandma likes us.”

While these things may be true, it’s no fun to have them yelled at a billion decibels in front of the meat counter. And the arms and legs attacking the air make it almost impossible to pick that kid up.  It’s like a two-foot defense perimeter that is bound to send you to the hospital the moment you breach it.

So you try to negotiate with them when you really wish you could just spank them and move on to the frozen veggies.  But you can’t spank them because you’re afraid you’ll end up in an eight by ten cell for six years with a murderous drug-dealing roommate who’s father obviously spanked him in the middle of a grocery store.

Eventually they give up. Yep, after about ten minutes they realize that they are not going to get those beer battered gummy worms and they get up and brush themselves off like nothing happened. So you start to move on down the isle just in time to see their brother or sister start the same routine in front of the donuts.

So last week we found ourselves in the cereal isle when my wife responded negatively to a question about cola soaked sugar coated chocolate cookie caramel flaky flakes.

Of course someone instantly dropped to the floor in a crying hysterical mess.  Arms impossibly flailing in every direction.  Legs kicking, or maybe peddling the air. Voice screaming about injustice and the lack of love and never buying stuff that tastes good.

Calmly, and with reason that only comes with experience, my loving wife simply looked down at me and said “Honey, if you don’t get up off the floor right now I’m leaving you forever…and I’m not taking the kids.”  Yeah, I got up.