This ever happen to you?
My two sons needed to burn off some energy today. Aged 4 & 5, they were bouncing off the walls here at home. I left the baby girl with the War Department and headed out to a place filled with inflatable "bounce houses".
Got there and there was one other family plus a mother with her two girls in the place. The mother & two girls don't figure into this.
From the getgo the family that was there started staring at me and the boys. None of us stand out in any way but it was a stare I've felt before, especially when I was a senior enlisted man (authority figure) in the canoe club. The kind of stare that says, "I hate your guts and if I can bring you down I will."
Whatever. Life is too short to appease fools. I just watched my kids, after a while they got too boisterous and wouldn't listen to me so I set them facing a wall for some time out. The younger one kept looking around until I put my hand on the back of his head, faced him into the wall and told him (loudly) to stay there.
The next thing I know the attendant of the place comes up and says there was a complaint from another parent that I was smashing my son's face into the wall. I told her it was a lie, demonstrated to her what I'd done and she was fine with that.
I then saw that family sitting in another room of the facility. Took my son up to them with me and said, "Someone at this table reported I'd smacked my boy's face into the wall, as you can see (brushing back the hair off his forehead) that didn't happen, no marks!" The oldest man in the family told me, without looking me in the eye, "We have no desire to talk to you."
Fine. There's really no fighting that unless you want the cops called for harassment. Just the way the world works. As I turned away I loudly stated, "What you people need to do is learn to mind your own business!" The attendant of the place was there by then and glad to see me go back to the play area. Poor kid, they don't train them for confrontations that might normally happen in gin mills. Who would think you'd need a bouncer at a kid's play center?
I spoke to the attendant later, stating I really didn't know what the heck was going on. Told her I'd felt their hostile stare the moment I stepped into the play room. To my surprise she said they admitted watching me, seems their daughter thought I was "scary". When they'd made the complaint it was so strongly worded the attendant fully expected there to be a hole in the wall from my boy's head! Sounds like their daughter needs professional help, and quickly. Too late for the parents.
At least with proven insanity like that I had no problem getting her support.
So, anyone else ever deal with idiocy like that? As I told the War Department, I know now the reason so many parents scream, "You just wait till I get you home!!"
2 comments:
Back in 1989, I took my two older boys, both in their early teens, on a trip to New York City. I was wearing my clerical collar at the time. We entered a hotel and I registered us, asking for a room with one double bed for the boys and a single bed for me.
From the moment we entered the hotel, I could feel 15 pairs of eyes boring into me, and lots of whispering and snickers.
I took the key, went up to the room with the boys, put our suitcases in the room and left. I took the boys to see the World Trade Center and the Empire State Building. We then went to dinner and returned to the hotel at 8:15 pm, and went straight to our room for the night.
We weren't in the room forty-five minutes when six cops entered the room (they got a pass key from the desk clerk) with guns drawn. I had to spend four hours at a police station proving that I was the father of the boys. Finally, when they were satisfied I and the boys were telling the truth, I rushed back to the hotel, demanded my money back ( I got it), retrieved our suitcases and caught the next plane back home. I never went back to NYC after that.
Wow!! My minor incident really pales besides that one. Guess there are a lot of idiots in this world, not just here in Texas.
Thanks for that, Most Rev. Gregori.
Post a Comment