Don't judge me!

This weekend was full of the usual nonsense that, despite promises made during the week of really spending some time together, forces H and me, more often than not, into separate cars with different combinations of children, taking them to various activities and leaves us looking at each other, bleary-eyed, Sunday night asking, "What exactly did we do this weekend?"

Saturday morning found me at the grocery store with #2 and Little Man, and H on his way to lacrosse with #1. Since we keep farmer's hours, even on the weekends - with the exception of Saturday night when we stay up too late, drinking way too much wine, and then are still woken up at the ass-crack of day by one of the offspring Sunday morning - H decided to stop for some coffee on his way to the field. #1 had not been in the best mood and was already claiming to be tired, so when a Miley Cyrus song came on as he pulled into the parking lot of the local Starbucks, he relented and allowed her to stay in the car while he ran in to get coffee. He was lucky enough to get the spot right in front of the window and as he was not burdened with my 15 adjective order, he'd be right out.

So as H is ordering his coffee, some guy walks in, and apparently having seen him leave #1, knows H is her father, and tells him in front of the whole store, "Dude*, you just left your kid in the car with the engine running? Anything could happen. That's fucked up." I am so, so proud of H. He got right in this idiot's face with a pointed finger and told him, "Mind your own damn business and get the hell out of here!" Which the guy did, quickly, without his coffee.

Oh. My. God. Dear readers, can you imagine, if that had been me instead of my mild-mannered H? I can just see the police blotter now, "Mother of three arrested in coffee shop assault..." This is the perfect example of something that drives me into a blind rage - people offering their opinions in parenting situations of which they know nothing. Why, why, why do people feel free to comment when children are involved? I can not even count the number of times I have been in the grocery store and had someone, the cashier, the deli guy, or a random person, tell me as Little Man sits crying in the cart, "Somebody needs a nap!" No, somebody needs to shut the fuck up, and that somebody is you because I am about to lose my damn mind after arguing with a toddler as to why he can not have a chocolate chip cookie at nine in the morning and the last thing I need is you telling me what my kids needs! Or another random person telling me I shouldn't let LM play with matchbox cars, while waiting in line at the post office becasue the wheels are a choking hazard. Really? Know what else is a hazard? Criticizing my choice of distracting toy, since I know you'd have something to say if my kids was whining his ass off while I'm in line with you. Maybe it was the only toy he would accept, or maybe it was the onyl one in my bag. The point is, you have no idea so keep your comments to yourself.

I fully realize why this particular interaction got both H and I so riled up. It hit a nerve. We know we aren't supposed to leave our kids alone in a car, but sometimes, as parents, you are so exhausted, you play the odds. What were the odds of #1 being abducted, right in front of the window of a crowded Starbucks, in a white, upper-middle class town, in a twelve year old Jetta? Not a car-jacker's dream vehicle I'd say. Sure, he was also taking a chance #1 wouldn't get curious about the gear shift, as in a story famous in family lore, when one of my brothers in-law pulled the car out of park while my mother in-law was in the pharmacy.

I conducted an informal survey, and 99% of my fellow parents have done something similar, whether it was leaving their kid in a car, or in their crib, sleeping, to run down the block to grab their other kid at school. Parenting these days has an added weight as we are not supposed to let our children out of sight for a split second, lest the worst happen. Doing some online research, kidnapping statistics have not gone down significantly in the past thirty years, yet we act as if our children could be snatched from our grasps any second. Modern parents are tired, tired of having to lug three kids in and out of the car to grab the dry cleaning when you are parked right out front, tired of having to wake the baby from his nap in the stroller to drag him into the school to pick up your other kids. So once in a while we cave, we do the wrong thing even though we would kill ourselves if something bad happened. We are parents, but we are human.

Yes, this is a case of protesting too much, but I know in my bones that guy who accosted H either has no children or has never been left to care for them for any extended period of time requiring booster seats and numerous errands and has no idea how much of a break it is to run into a coffee shop alone for thirty seconds without having to worry about someone knocking over the travel mug display. The moral of the story is, he should have kept his damn latte hole shut. Or better yet, if he was so concerned, offered to stay by the car while H got his coffee, but that would have been too inconvenient. It's easier to open your mouth than to try to help - or understand.

*Using this honorific past the age of eighteen immediate qualifies you as an idiot in my book.