Schooooool's OUT. For. The summer!
No, I'm not celebrating. This is my third year of retirement, you know. The days of popping Alice Cooper into a jambox after the final bell at the end of the year are done. Heh, heh. That's how long I've been teaching! The methods of music broadcast have changed considerably.
Here I am, bringing the summer cessation of book-learnin' to you like a public service announcement, when in all actuality, you've probably discerned this for yourself. Especially if you've been grocery shopping.
Let the record show that every woman in the store is wrangling at least three kids!
Mrs. HM is not a child-hater. She simply finds other people's children to be an irritant that she'd rather avoid. Like cigarette smoke in a casino. The old adage that children should be seen and not heard is something that Mrs. HM might cross-stitch, frame, and hang on the end of her shopping cart, if she was only more adept at crafts. In fact, she would add a caret to insert the word NOT in front of SEEN.
These moppets don't need to be orbiting the cart, whining and fussing, stopping to stare with wide creepy eyes at other shoppers. Mrs. HM, perhaps... Who would never recommend leaving them locked up in a hot car. No siree, Bob! Mrs. HM has a solution.
BURLAP FEED SACKS!
You know, the rough, brown, loosely-woven kind that were used for the corn my grandpa bought for his hogs. Drape it over the moppets, and they're out of sight. If they keep one hand on the cart, they won't get lost. No sights to distract them and temp them away. They can breathe. But like a bird with the cover on its cage, they might be silent!
I guess those burlap sacks are still around. It's been many years since I went to the feed store with Grandma and Grandpa. My mom was going to college for her teaching degree that summer. Grandma worked nights as a nurse's aide at Number 4 (that's what everybody called it), the state mental hospital. Grandpa was a lead miner on the day shift. We'd pick him up in the truck at 3:30 at St. Joe (the lead mine) and head to the feed store.
Back then, my sister the little future ex-mayor's wife was afraid to walk across the porch boards of the feed store. Grandpa had to carry her, all red-faced and flushed from the heat, her flaming orange hair curling from the humidity. She thought she would slip through the cracks. Let the record show that she was wider than a half-inch! I think she might have been having flashbacks to falling under the bleachers at the stock car races!
I'm sure Sis and I were never annoying to other people. Well. ME, anyway. That said...
I would not have minded wearing a burlap sack over my head.
6 comments:
I think children are quite acceptable as long as they're well behaved; not constantly whining or throwing a tantrum every few minutes, and of course running all over the store while the mum screams "get back here!" is a big no no. Mine learned a good bit of their reading by looking for items that matched the words on the list I gave each of them, then as teenagers they were fun to shop with, having contests to see who could land a pack of toilet paper squarely in the cart from half an aisle away and so on.
River,
Of course I took both my kids with me, and the older boys before that. The older ones were really well-behaved with me. The Pony wanted to ride in the cart until he was about 7 (!) sitting down in the part where we piled groceries on him, playing his handheld game thingies. Genius would ask permission and wander off to the electronics department, where he quizzed the employees about any new gadgets they had.
I stopped the whining and begging early on, by leaving the cart and taking Young Genius out for a stern talking-to and then home without the shopping. Then I made a strict policy that anything they wanted had to be paid for out of their weekly allowance. They decided they really didn't want all that much! And even worked together to pool their money and save for some items. Usually what Genius wanted, heh, heh!
Still... I would not have minded draping them with burlap sacks.
I remember the talks I had with my kids when we went shopping. No whining, no touching anything, treats would be had after the shopping was done. And I always followed through with the treats. Usually something sweet in a cafe, like a donut and a milkshake. I could take those kids absolutely anywhere and be proud of them.
River,
Rewards work! The follow-through is the main thing. Even with consequences instead of rewards.
I would really like to pinch some of them in an inconspicuous place, then slink away. I had 5 children in 8 years and going shopping with them was unavoidable, but they knew better than to touch things or beg for something I was not going to buy. I would simply leave the store with them and have a talk in the car. If that didn't work, we went home. Then they got older and one would irritate the younger one. I stopped taking them at all. A good punishment for an older sibling was to babysit while I shopped AND listen to the younger child read!
Kathy,
OOH! One of my college professors did that when she came to observe my student teaching. One of the freshman boys was acting the fool, and as we all walked out of the gym, she got a death grip on his skinny bicep. "Ow! You're hurting me!" he said. She replied, very low, "I know." Ahh... how times have changed.
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