Adult Swim

Children should be seen and not heard. And by children, I don’t mean mine. My children are darling and precious and wonderful. I mean all those little kids whining and sniveling and crying in public. I know they shouldn’t all use pacifiers until they enter school, but seriously, can’t you teach your children to put a sock in it? Go to a grocery store or Target before lunchtime on any weekday and you'll see what I mean. It’s loud out there in public, man. If I drive down the street blaring my music, I am violating a noise ordinance, but so is your child in the Easter candy display. Maybe you shouldn’t push your cart by the M&M’s if you aren’t going to rip open a bag and share them with your little chatterbox.

I might sound a bit bitter; I recognize the makings of a curmudgeon in myself. I remember those days too. Breakfast was over and lunch and naptime were hours away. How were the next seven hours before bedtime going to be occupied? Every day can’t be filled by inventorying the Legos and Matchbox cars. A tea party every day is less party-like when it becomes a daily chore.

There are only so many times you can change a Polly Pocket dress before you lose brain cells and develop arthritis in your fingers. Plus, sometimes you need more Pull-ups and children’s Benadryl and a box of wine. Sometimes you just have to get out of the house with your little kids before you become the breaking news story on CNN. So you pack up the two year old and the newborn in your minivan and you kill an hour at the grocery store, opening a bag of Goldfish crackers for snack time and hoping to have some stimulating conversation with another mom pushing around her grocery cart shaped like a truck filled with her own 2.5 offspring. Then you check out and think, did that bag boy just flirt with me, and you catch a glimpse of your greasy hair and spit-up stained sweatshirt in the minivan door and remember that no one is flirting with you in your current state of unkempt fertility. You are not a MILF; you are a MILA (Mom I’d Like to Avoid.)

 So I get it, really. I have been there. I had many a trip to Walmart with my two year old just to watch the seafood manager fill up the lobster tank. My daughter S and I were thrilled when we timed it just right. The man would unload the box with these disoriented three pounders and drop them in the tank, at which point all the lobsters would demonstrate their territorial behaviors without the use of their rubber banded claws. But just so you know, if S had a meltdown in front of the Little Debbie snack cakes, I would snatch her out of the cart and abandon my errand because no one, including me, wanted to hear her whine and carry on.

That’s my point, really. No one wants to hear your kid whine. Maybe you are good at ignoring your child’s desperate pleas for the Dora the Explorer body wash, but I am not. I also can’t tune out the sound of your newborn’s mewing for that delayed bottle, and I really don’t want to listen to your girl scream when her brother yanks out one of her braids in front of the cat food. All it does is make me forget what I needed at Target in the first place. Just make it stop.

One of my friends says the problem isn’t all the noises, but my inability to tolerate or overlook them. I am just as squirrelly with the pen clickers and chair rockers and foot tappers as I am with the whiny preschoolers. I want it all to go away because I can’t tune any of it out.  But I disagree; I am pretty observant, and if there is that much assault on my radar, chances are pretty good that two planes will be sharing the same runway. It's not that I am intolerant, but rather, some of you are just plain annoying.

Think of how much more efficient it is to run errands without your kids. The bill is cheaper because the impulse purchases are at a minimum, plus your time is your own. No one complains about being hungry or bored or hating kale or why can’t you buy the pink Qtips. How much simpler is it to get only yourself in and out of your car seat? Not only that, but you can listen to whatever you want on the radio, and if you want to hear it three more times, who is going to stop you? If I am going to listen to a song three times in a row, I rather it be the Beastie Boys than the Wiggles.

Here’s what I am suggesting: leave the mid-mornings at retail establishments to the stay at home moms with school-aged kids and the old people. I know you have errands to run too, but why not do them after the kids go to bed? They’re young, so lights out should be about 7:30 or so, right? That leaves you plenty of time to hit the grocery store, the pharmacy, and even a department store while your husband stays home and looks at porn. Don’t worry about the shower and early bedtime you indulge in after the little darlings go to bed. Shower with them during the day and call it water play time. How educational is it to show them how time and gravity can do a number on the human body? And while you’re at it, shouldn’t nap time be for the whole family? You’ll be fresh for that  pre-dinner hell hour if you catch a little nap after lunch. And after they are all tucked in for the night, well, what better time to get your shop on?

 Please, I beg you. If you won’t do it for me, then think of the children. Because if you don’t shut them up and keep them home, I don’t know what I’m going to do, but it ain’t gonna be pretty.