Bad Parent: Friend Alert
I love you, but I hate your kid.
by Madeline Holler
March 22, 2007
I figured the best thing would be to get out of the house. So I packed
up the baby and the now four-year-olds, and we went to the zoo. As we
rounded the rainforest, Beatrice had to go to the
bathroom. We headed to the nearest one. After she finished up, Evie
decided she had to go too. So we waited. And waited.
"Madeline?" came her voice over the din of automatically flushing
toilets and running sinks. "Can you wipe me?"
I had already yelled at Evie for running off near the wildcats and lost
my patience with her when she pounded on the thick plexi-glass windows
in the herpatorium. So I was counting the minutes — we were down to
about 30 — before we could drop her off at home. So close.
"You're a big girl, Evie," I said, voice flat. "You can do it."
"No, I can't. I want you to do it," she said. "Please?" she asked. "I really need you to wipe me."
"No, Evie. You know how."
I wasn't the only woman in the zoo bathroom with kids, but I got no
sympathetic smiles. I tried waiting Evie out.
"Please?" she asked, not a minute later. "I really need you to wipe me."
I was seething again.
"Beatrice," I hissed, "wait here with the stroller." I yanked open the
rusty stall door. Evie, pants around her ankles and smiling, handed me a
few squares of very weak toilet paper.
Lisa and I are in touch. She is still the person I feel safest telling
the dark tales of my new lows in parenting. I can't say whether we'll be
friends decades from now, though. It seems impossible to sustain a real
friendship for so many years without having known each other all that
long before I moved away. Plus, the distance. How often will we ever see
each other? There are all those miles between us. All those miles and a
little something else.
©2007 Madeline Holler and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Madeline Holler is a writer and mother of two. She lives in Long Beach, California. |
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