It's Lori here from the Random Ramblings of a SAHM. The lovely VB in C has asked me to guest post while she's on holidays. So I thought, for your reading pleasure, I'd bring you a tale of parental humiliation and a talktaive toddler. Because everyone likes one of those.
My little Chop, bless him, is almost about to turn the Big Three. Six months ago I was lamenting that he did not talk very much at all. These days...well... you just can't keep him quiet.
The stage for this particular comedy of errors was the supermarket checkout. I'm sure it's been the scene of parental humiliation, in it's various incarnations, many, many times before. And I doubt my face, with it's tomato-red shade of embarrassment, will be the last tomato-red parent face to grace the hallowed lanes of the confectionery-free checkout.
Or something.
Anyway. Allow me to set the scene- me, on the last leg of my shopping expedition. A trolley packed with all manner of groceries, from bread to milk to mini M &am M's, all being rapidly squashed and trodden on by my toddler. Have I mentioned I have two kids with me? No, I haven't. Well, I have two kids with me. The Bump, who's just turned one, riding shotgun in the trolley seat- the allocated place for small children to be. And the Chop (he's almost three, remember?) standing in the trolley itself. Squashing my groceries. (Potentially unsafe, I know, but slightly safer than having him run hell for leather from the pet food aisle to the toy aisle and back again, no...?).
So the three of us are the checkout, piling out stuff onto the belt. The checkout chick, in this instance, is not so much of a 'chick', but more of a matronly, I-used-be-a-full-time-mum-but-now-I'm-an-empty-nester kind of bird.
I'm almost against these type of women working the checkouts in major supermarkets chains. If I have to buy tampons or condoms or something like that, I don't want to purchase it off someone who looks like my mum. I feel like I'm getting disapproving stares. Even when I'm not. And I used work checkouts, I know what goes through people's heads when you see someone buying condoms.
You see where this is going, right...?
An innocent tube of lubricant*. As innocent as a tube of lubricant can be, anyway. Tucked away within the pile of groceries, hidden under the cat food, barbecue sauce and tinned tomatoes. And of course it was the the innocent tube of lubricant that my toddler picked up, and waved around, while calling out,
"What's this, mummy, what's this?!"
Oh my. The disapproving look on the checkout woman's face. The snigger from the mum behind me. Ground, swallow me whole, now.
It was really so very tempting, given the circumstances, to smile brightly and say,
"Why, darling, that's called 'lubricant'!"
But, of course, I simply do not have the balls for that. So I cringed, and blushed, and muttered something like,
"Baby, that's toothpaste, Put it down now, please",
...and tried to pretend the whole thing never happened.
If toddlers weren't put on the earth to thoroughly humiliate their parents at every conceivable opportunity, then I'm actually not sure what their purpose is.
*Yep, I said "lubricant". Nothing kinky. Open gutter, remove mind. And if you really must know why I needed to include that particular item in this weeks grocery shopping, you'll just have to read this post here.
