“She LOST her daughter’s shoes!”
“NO! HOW do you LOSE your child’s SHOES?”
“I KNOW!”
Then, much head-shaking and eye-rolling and tongue-clucking from the two women conversing, and some squirming and glaring from me. I didn’t feel like getting into this conversation, particularly to explain that I lose shoes, my own and my children’s, fairly regularly.
I also kept quiet because this conversation was fascinating me.
Two women I had just met, both with small children, were discussing their “friend,” a mother of three children, from infant to elementary age. Their “friend” had just gone back to work, and she was struggling. Sounds like a good time for someone to swoop in and help her out–OR, tear her to shreds in front of strangers at a cocktail party.
There’s more:
“And my neighbor babysits for her, and she actually had to call her mother to find out how to start the dishwasher because it was so full of dirty dishes that she couldn’t even find a plate to give the kids their snack! And she has TWO dishwashers! BOTH full of dirty dishes!”
(They are horrified at dirty dishes; I am horrified that a teenaged babysitter cannot figure out how to wash a dish.)
“And the other night she had the kids up at 8:00 pm making cookies because she feels all guilty for missing out on stuff with them and they didn’t even do their HOMEWORK!”
“And she keeps leaving work early to try to see them before their bed time!”
After a night of meeting lovely new people (and finding out later that some of them hated each other because some people’s brothers had affairs with other people’s sisters while married to someone else’s twin or something like that-also fascinating), the night was over, and I grabbed my baby, who was stashed behind a couch, asleep in his car seat, and went out to my car.
As I was driving away, I fervently hoped that somewhere in this city that woman was making cookies with her children at an inappropriately late hour, while crumpled, undone homework sat in the corner amid some lost shoes and both dishwashers were full . . . but she didn’t care because the cookie-making was just what she needed.
Oh Marjorie-
You weren’t showing up in my feed for ages and now here you are! (I used to go by a pseudonym and comment, now I’m me.) Yay!
Imperfect mothers unite (and that’s all of us – miss dirty dishwaher lady)!
Once, I drove around for half a day with my daughter’s shoes on top of my car. I’m glad that my friends didn’t see it as an indictment of my parenting or competence. More than anything, I hope the woman in question finds better friends. Oh…and I hope karma bites those other women in the ass.
Anyone who says she has never lost her kid’s shoes is a dirty liar. Hell, just this morning I lost my son’s jacket, my keys and forgot I had a chunk of watermelon in my purse for an hour.
And that’s a good morning
And that is why I don’t talk to strangers.
Hi Sarah-Yeah, it has been forever. I have been doing laundry for two months, but I’ve changed my mind about that…
Hilarious about the shoes on the roof and watermelon in the purse, Vikki and Jen! You’re my kind of people.
I don’t really know what was up with those two women, but, yeah, I tend to think they’re dirty liars, too…
Tim, to be fair, everyone else there that night was extraordinarily kind and fantastic. Don’t be scared of strangers!
I’m slightly bemused by the owning of two dishwashers…or is that jealousy…hmm, would be handy to own two sometimes.
Cookie making should take precedence over homework and bedtimes on occasion, it keeps one sane. Though in our case it’s more likely to be reading just one more chapter or looking at just one more page of LOLcats or finishing the game of Munchkins, because I’m not much of a baker
First off- homework is pretty much garbage 99% of the time. I will actually insist my kids not do it and I was a teacher. I think about 89% of school is a waste of time and the rest is split between recess and the teachable moments that the government hasn’t managed to squeeze out yet.
Secondly- shoes are pretty much designed to hurt your feet anyway. Who needs them?