Um, that's for, you know...THE KIDS.

As I have come to learn, you can never judge a book by it’s cover. Although I’m curious what my cover says about me, I know that it’s easy enough to fool someone for a short period of time that I am a mature adult. But after about ten minutes of acting like a real lady, I quickly lose steam. Soon enough my inner five year old laughs out loud at your futile attempt to cover your fart with a fake sneeze. And neither of us are fooling anyone.

I was in the children’s section of the library with Jack one afternoon. There’s a nice size play area with a couch for the grownups, miniature chairs and knee-high tables for the kiddies. A little blonde boy wandered over, without parent, to the train table. He and Jack made some small talk and then got down to business pushing trains around the tracks.

The boy came over to show me one of the trains while I was on the laptop. "Oh, that’s nice." I tried to get back to work but he insisted on describing the train’s features in detail. Then he started in with the questions. Not wanting to crush any of his beliefs in the meaning of life, I offered nothing but vague answers, "Oh, uh-huh, um yeah...uh...I don’t know...uuuhhhh," Where is this kid’s mother? I rubbernecked around and didn’t see anyone nearby that looked related to him. He finally took a hint and left me alone.

Another twenty minutes went by before the very social little-orphan-Andy’s mom finally appeared. She was blonde, pretty, well dressed and carried a Coach bag. "Hey, Sweetie, having fun? Yeah, well, anyway, we have to get going soon to Wal-Mart so we can buy that...toy you wanted! Are you done playing now?" Oooh, I wonder what he’ll say? "NO!" Parental rule of thumb: Never ask a child a yes or no question when you have already decided the answer for them. "Do you want to use the potty before we go, Sweetie?" "NO!" he shouted on cue. Duh, lady, duh.

She got down next to him and made a poor attempt to look him in the eye. I guess she figured that he wasn’t listening, when really, she wasn’t parenting. You know, if you’re not willing to watch your child in public places, then you probably shouldn’t expect them to listen only when you decide to check in just to order him around.

This kid’s thinking, "What? Oh, I see, now that I’ve been doing what I want to do without you around, you want to just surprise me with this piece of news? You want me to go sit on the toilet and then leave all this to go to, what, Wal-Mart was it? So excuse me if I don’t want to, I’m busy pushing trains here." What followed, was a little more difficult to understand with all the screaming and other things that went along with a tantrum. I wanted to say, "You go, Sweetie!" but she’d picked him up and carried him off before I could.

She brought him into the children’s bathroom which was only steps away and unbeknownst to her, did not have soundproof walls. She reprimanded the child at high volume, while the rest of the library got a free show. Then we were treated to the sounds of a small boy peeing. Oh, isn’t life grand.

When the boy emerged, he had an announcement to make, "Uh, you (pointing to the entire library) can’t go in the baffroom! My mommy’s in dere!" That’s curious, I thought, Last time I took Jack to go potty, there was only a tiny children’s toilet to use. It looks like a regular toilet, but it’s about a third of the size and really low to the ground. Jack’s only thirty-six inches tall and his feet didn’t even leave the floor when he used it.

What I heard next was not a tinkle, but more like what I supposed how it would sound if a sixteen year old was dumping out a keg of beer in a hurry because his parents came home early and were about to crash his underage drinking party. I could picture the scene clearer than I could hear it. Here’s this prissy mom; a full grown adult, squatting down to use a tiny potty.

I wondered if she was able to get all the way down and touch her ass to the seat, or did she go about a halfway and let gravity finish the job? And how the hell was she going to get back up without putting her hands on the disgusting bathroom floor for balance?

What happened between the-world’s-most-audible-public-urination-not-recorded followed by wiping-that-sounded-like-she-was-trying-to-fold-an-open-map and the actual flush, was a very long pause. I imagined that she fell over when she tried to get up. Her ankles were probably tied together by the pants she had push down so low that she might as well have taken them off. But eventually, she came out completely unscathed. She looked totally calm, refreshed, even.

If asked when I first saw her, I would have guessed her cover said she was a woman of wealth who probably knew which fork to use at a fancy dinner party. She carried a Coach bag and looked sophisticated, but she had fooled me and I’m sure the many others who were within an earshot of the children’s bathroom. Her true insides were revealed and the plot thickened. Yes, "Coach" and "class" both begin with the letter "C", but that’s the only thing they had in common when it came to her. And myself, I had to bite the inside of my childish cheeks, when she came back out. She hadn’t one clue what had just taken place. As she struggled to leave with her defiant son, I dug into my purse to write this one down in my notepad. I’m not sure what the cover would look like, but this one’s definitely going in the books.


Make sure you're taking advantage of our current renter, StumblingThroughLifeWithGrace. And I didn't mean it like that.
What I'm trying to say is that you better get your behind over there before time runs out and she moves on, and it could happen at any minute. So....HURRY! CLICK ON THE THUMBNAIL!!! Now, here's something to think about: Do you think she means that she's "stumbling through life, but doing it as gracefully as possible" or that she's inviting us to "stumble through life with Grace" and she's Grace? Do you get what I'm saying, here? Like she might actually be Grace and the whole "3rd Times a Charm" is just some kind of alias.
Dude, that's like, deep or something.