Are you going to choose to be peaceful or angry?



There's nothing like hind sight to tell you what you did wrong and to point out every sign in the universe that attempted at leading you in the right direction.

The story ends with me sitting on my front porch, cigarette in one hand and my phone in the other, talking to my mother about what just happened shortly before, and realizing, as I spoke, every minor second where I went wrong and missed some sort of sign. It ends with me realizing I could have completely avoided a dramatic situation of chasing my 5-year old around a busy store and then ending up at home, belt in one hand and his hands restrained in the other. (Which, by the way, is not against any law for all you do gooders with no children. It is completely legal to whip my child, even with a belt, as long as I do it on his bottom and leave no marks. And since it would be considered child pornography, I won't post pictures of his mark-free buttox online.)

So it began with a quick trip by Wal-Greens on the way home. I happened to remember that Caden (my 5 year old) needed pull ups.

Let me back up a second... Caden has been talking, for weeks (since the last time we went into Wal-Greens), about these dang Cars 2 Walkie Talkies he saw right up in the front of the store. I kept telling him I don't have the money right now to buy them nor has he had a long enough streak of good behavior to have earned something that expensive yet. (Mind you, I had no clue how much those things were, but I knew it was a bigger reward item.)

Anyway, back to tonight.

We pull into the Wal-Greens parking lot when Caden begins, yet again, about how he really REALLY wants those walkie talkies. This has been something he has asked me every day for about two weeks, and it REALLY becomes fresh on his mind when we pull into the parking lot of the store where he remembered seeing them.

We walk into the store, and I tell him, for the third time since we pulled in the parking lot, that we are not there to get toys. He goes straight up to the shelf where he remembered seeing the toy before, and they weren't there. (yay!)

Unfortunately, it didn't end there. He then proceeds to ask the lady behind the register where the walkie talkies were. I tell him, again, that we aren't getting them. The lady behind the register says 'we don't have walkie talkies here.' (yay!)

I finally tell Caden, to hopefully get him to see it my way at least for today's visit, that we will look to see if we can find the walkie talkies so we could see how much they were. I added, yet again, that we were there for pull ups and probably couldn't afford the walkie talkies today.

The lady at the register tells him that if they have that toy, it would be in the toy aisle. So we grab our pull ups and head three or four aisles over to the toys. No walkie talkies.... until...

We rounded the corner over by the pharmacy, and low and behold, there were the damn walkie talkies. Luckily, they were $30, so I thought I was going to get out of it. I told him they were too much money and we couldn't afford them. So, he tries to convince me to buy him one of the other toys on the same shelf - all Cars 2 toys too.

I tell him no. No explanation, no nothing. Just no.

I tell him no again.

Then I walk off because he is not having no for an answer.

I get down to the end of the aisle and stop to begin counting. He stands there staring at me until I get to 3, without following me like I told him to. At that point, I gave him his consequence of no play time when we get home (straight to bath and bed - down to no toys in the bathtub). I walked toward him to make him come with me, and he runs off.

I yelled 'bye' and started walking toward the register. He never followed. I even caught myself yelling across the store that I would beat the hell out of him right there in front of everyone if I had to run after him.

Nothing worked.

None of the employees did anything to help when I told them my child was loose in the store and running away from me when I went after him. No one helped when I told them I couldn't find him.

So, I paid for the pull ups and sat them down at the register in the bag. I waited by the door for a minute or two, pissed as all get-out.

This Wal-Greens has mirrors on the back wall, luckily. So I slowly began walking in the front of the store, looking down aisles and at the mirrors to see if I could see him anywhere. I finally caught a glimpse of him in the mirror, crouched down playing with a toy in the toy aisle. So, I went down the adjoining aisle and snuck up behind him. I popped him once and dragged him out the store. I figured we caused too much of a scene as it was, so he got the rest of his spanking when we got home 2 minutes later.

Now, here's the hind sight part.

I like to think of it in a humorous way....

I had the Devil on one shoulder showing me pretty things - brightly lit up signs telling me what direction to go in. Then there was God with his lightly colored, light-less, see-through signs just barely waving around in front of my face.

See, here's how it REALLY went (but I didn't see it like this at the time).

God waves his little sign briefly, whispering no dummy, as I pull into the parking lot, knowing good and well that Food Lion, Rite Aide, and Dollar General sell pull ups and are all neighboring Wal-Greens. But, the devil screamed in my ear, 'Wal-Greens has dippin dots!' (I'm a sucker for those.)

Then, God waves his little sign a little more, whispering a little louder 'no dummy,' as I allow Caden to talk me into him asking the lady at the register about walkie talkies and she said they didn't have any there. Then the devil steps in after a few seconds and has her tell him they would be in the toy aisle.

So, God waves another sign, a little bigger, yelling a little louder 'no dummy, no dummy' when we start walking toward the devil's brightly lit sign showing where the walkie talkies were.... you see... they were at the very back of the store (they were at the front at our last visit), in a corner by the pharmacy, where we had to go out of our way from the pull ups we originally went there to buy.

At that point, God backed off and said 'fine, idiot, ignore my warnings, learn the hard way, I gave you sign after sign to just ignore Caden, but noooooooo, you didn't listen. You fell for the bright and pretty and now you have to deal with it. Have fun with that fear and anger I tried to help you avoid.'

So, in short, I ignored every opportunity placed in front of me to avoid an ugly situation, and I ended up being the one causing the bigger scene and allowing my fear and anger to take over. I gave up my peace, and Caden won.

So, my rational brain and I will be having a long, in-depth discussion and parenting session in the near future.