Other kid's parents bug me...


I don't know why this is, but since having my own child it seems that most other parents bug the shit out of me. I've basically avoided all interactions with other parents (except those who are close to me) because of the simple fact that I can't stand them. It all started with one of my first encounters:
It always seems like there is this pissing contest between every parent besides me and I'd like to see the rule sheet for it. So there I was taking my kid to the park for the first time on my own to push her in the swing for the first time (she was about a year old). This was supposed to be an innocent time to create a lovely memory with my child, but instead I end up coming in direct contact with a "one upper" mom as I like to call them. I'm swinging my darling child, while making no attempt to catch the eye of anyone or let alone talk to anyone else around me, when this One Upper decides to speak to me. It starts out with the usual, "How old is she?" and after that she never asked another question about me or my kid for the entire duration of the conversation. She proceeded to tell me her whole labor and delivery story within the first 5 minutes of our chat while her tool of a Husband played with his cellphone and interjected only to brag about random things that he owned that didn't really pertain to the conversation at hand (yes he was one of those).
Now this chick had to be maybe only a year or two older then me and only had one child as well, but apparently that child being 3 months older then mine meant that this One Upper had a wealth more of knowledge then I had and was a complete expert at parenting. As I tried to get a few sentences in with things my daughter was or was not doing at her stage of development, she would always come back with something about how her daughter "already could do that, did it at an earlier age, or could do it better". Apparently her kid was sensational because she could turn on her husband's stereo system on her own. This is where he interjects with, "And I have a very huge, very expensive, and very loud system *chuckle chuckle". Then when I comment on how it's sunny outside and I wish that my kid would wear sunglasses at this age, she answers me with, "oh my daughter loves to wear sunglasses. In fact she never wants to take them off. Isn't that right Sally?" Then she proceeded to basically shove said pair of sunglasses onto the poor kid's face while the little girl slapped them out of her mother's hands over and over yelling, "no! don't want them!".
Next, I made the mistake of mentioning how my kid (who is and was at the time in fact very much developing ahead of her age...not that they would have known since they wouldn't listen if I had mentioned it anyway) was still not walking at the age of one. One Upper then answers, "oh my kid was walking at the age of......well....7 months....isn't that right honey?", she asks her husband. "oh it was more like....yeah 7 months" he responds.
"Wow...most kids aren't even crawling by then!" I say. "oh yeah...she completely skipped crawling all together", she tells me........ Of course she did.
So after listening to these two shrews brag about their extremely gifted child, who by the way the entire time is basically staring at the sun and eating dirt, I pulled out my big guns........breastfeeding. I prided myself on the fact that I exclusively breastfed my kid for a long ass time. I seldom bring it up but I knew a woman like her most likely didn't feed her kid the tit, or didn't try at all. So I mention in a subtle way that I can't get my kid off the boob, and then I ask the "One Upper" if she breastfed her brilliant child. She answers me by saying, "Oh I did for a while but I completely dried up!". Oh lord! I was just waiting for the excuse and she gave me a prime one. Because it's fucking impossible to dry up unless you stopped all together! Of course she quickly changed the subject back to her long and grueling delivery and how her husband yelled at every person in the hospital, demanding this or that because they deserved the best blah blah blah. And of course since I had a C-section and she didn't her labor was much more harder, and much more important and fu-filling then mine could ever be.
God I wanted out of this conversation, and my poor child just sat there staring at this women in silence. Part of me almost gave into the whole pissing contest between parents. I started thinking in my head, "if only this bitch could see what my baby could do...man I wish Olivia wasn't being so quiet right now. They must think she's slow or something". Then and there I knew it was time to go. But before we departed her husband had to throw in a few extra brags about how he'd seen the stroller I had at Wal-mart and was so glad he bought such an expensive one for his daughter...but he barely has room for it with all the toys and clothes she has.....Nice meeting you too.

Two days later I saw them coming out of the apartment a few doors down from me. Apparently they lived in the ghetto too. Apparently they were on low income housing section 8. No wonder he had so much to brag about...

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