This is going to come as news to anyone that has not been a parent or used to be one decades ago. Young children don’t behave, they constantly lose their listening ears and walking feet, and a lot of times they don’t even know what they want.
We had one such occurrence in the aquarium yesterday. After walking between the two buildings the kids decided they were starving and needed some food. We stopped to get some snacks. The process of which was a disaster in its own right. We ended up with a few bags of chips and cookies and no one liked the cookies and most of the chips went uneaten. Windsor started demanding a drink so I got a blue Powerade for everyone to share. He wasn’t a fan of sharing.
When we were finished Abigail wanted to throw the drink cup away, but Windsor was trying to finish it. To spite Abigail he threw it away. As she stormed off crying I pulled the cup from the trash can and offered it to her. As I threw the cup back into the trashcan I noticed an older couple watching me. I shrugged my shoulders in a, kids, what are you going to do, gesture and the old man shook his head at me. I then told him where to go and what he could do when he got there and followed my family out.
The children were all happily looking at the sloth that was visiting as the special exhibit and had completely forgotten arguing over who gets to throw a cup away. Children are interesting in that way. They can be crying their eyes out one minute and over it because of a cute sloth the very next. I realized it wasn’t worth it to let one stupid-idiot ruin my entire day so I faded back in with my family and we went on to enjoy the rest of the aquarium.
At the end of the day everyone had a great time. Roland ran into a friend from school and tried to split his time between his friend and family, and we went to the pet store and Outback afterwards. Overall a great family day with a ten minute interruption to buy and not eat four bags of chips, a cookie, and to fight over a drink.
David Huzzard Writes 