Back to School Hell
We all know that most parents of small children are obnoxious. This isn’t really a judgment, it’s a fact. Every parent thinks that their child is the smartest, cutest, funniest, or any other-est. In my experience, mothers are more guilty of fathers than this behavior, but yesterday, I witnessed a father who was just as bad or worse.
In Texas, school starts tomorrow. Therefore, this was the weekend for all the procrastinators, including me, to rush out and finish up the back-to-school shopping. One of our outings included the back-to-school haircut. I knew it would be crowded because I take my son to one of those walk-in places, so I was prepared to wait. Surprisingly, when I arrived, there was only two other people in there. I got in line behind a guy and his small son who looked to be about 5 years old. The dad was giving the lady their info, and here’s the annoying part. He did not know how to tell her how to cut his son’s hair, so he called his wife on the phone to ask her. Instead of getting the information or letting the hairdresser talk to his wife, he gave his wandering child the phone and said “Ok, say hi to Mommy.”
All this happened while I’m still waiting in line behind them just to sign up to put my son on the list to wait for a haircut. Think that’s frustrating? Well, it only gets better.
He then proceeds to tell his son (insert stupid talking to child voice that so many parents use), “Ok, take the phone to the lady so Mommy can tell her how to cut your hair.” This child prodigy starts wandering around the lobby, looking at the toys saying into the phone, “Mommy, they have Legos here,” while Dad looks on, beaming with approval at the genius before him.
“Take the phone to the lady so she can find out how to cut your hair.”
“Mommy, I’m gonna get a hair cut.”
And Father of the Year just stands there while his child is wandering around playing with the cell phone, with people standing in line behind him. Meanwhile, three other people have walked in and are standing in line behind me.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer. What I really wanted to do was kick his ass and tell him how he will realize in a few years that most strangers do not give a crap about his kid and will not be humored his son’s antics. Instead, I politely said, “Excuse me, your son is very cute, but we have a lot of errands to run today and would like to get finished here. Could I go ahead and put my son’s name on the list while he talked to his Mom on the phone?”
I got the stare down. From a dad. I’ve experienced the parent stare down from plenty of mothers, but this is the first time I had one from a father. It was that condescending expression of knowing that I’m too cold hearted of a bitch who is jealous of not having such a cute child and expresses her bitterness by attacking the parents of the wonderful children. But, guess what? As with most men, my nagging worked! He was snapped back to reality and took the phone away from Junior and gave it to the hairdresser.
I found out later that the little boy was only 4. I think that anyone without a child starting school should have not been allowed out of the house all weekend to leave the highways open for the seasoned procrastinators.
I think we only ended up waiting 20 minutes to get a haircut. Not bad, considering 10 of them were spent waiting in line to even get on the list. The race is on. School is now is session.
September 5th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
So how did it go???