Public Service Announcement

If you yell at and threaten your child who is small enough to sit in the built-in baby seat on the cart at the grocery store, I will yell at you in the middle of the ethnic foods aisle.

I had run into our friend D and her kids in front of the refried beans, and stopped to talk. While we were standing there, I heard a male voice yelling something along the lines of, "You sit down! Don't you sit up again! If you sit up again. . . !"

I turned to see who the asshole was, and saw a kid barely old enough to drive shaking his finger at (and possibly swatting?? I really don't remember) a kid who was in the baby seat of the cart. Not the front part like where Peeper sits, but the built-in baby seat.

I flipped out.

I put on my Teacher Voice, and said, "That is an INFANT!"

I half expected a grown woman to come around the corner and scold him for being mean to his little brother, but sadly, no. Instead, he told me, "I'm teaching my son. . . " and "Are you telling me I don't know how to raise my son?"

To be honest, I don't know if I actually said, "YES!" out loud, but I tell ya, I sure wanted to.

As D pointed out, if this idiot had strapped the poor kid in properly in the first place, he wouldn't have been leaning forward and sitting up.

Maybe  he wasn't an infant, per se, but he certainly wasn't much more than a year old. Definitely not old enough to expect him to understand and cooperate with such instructions, and certainly not when they are yelled in his face.

Perhaps (obviously) it wasn't the best way to handle the situation, but I just couldn't hold my tongue. I do wish I could have found a more constructive way to get my point across, though.