A Lesson in Manners, Courtesy of My Toddler

Toddlers are not known for their social graces.  Axel has mastered please, but that’s because he’s figured out that he gets something – juice! spatulas! thrown in the air! – when he says it.  He stares blankely at me when I encourage him to say thank you, and he has been known to shove his finger up his nose, even though we tell him that you only do that in private.  (Really.  I can’t figure out what else to say.  How do you get a kid to stop mining for nose gold?)

But recently, he reminded me, and hopefully one of the other mothers at our daycare, just how we should treat one another.  See, I have a daycare drop off evil nemesis.  At least, that’s how I’ve come to think of her.  After just three drop off encounters, I have elevated what’s really a slight annoyance between two harried mothers into an epic battle between good and evil.  Let me just give you the visuals: her car is a big, black, German-made luxury SUV.  Mine is a shiny gold station wagon full of stale Cheerios and rainbows.  She tends to wear black, like all classic villians.  I tend to wear blue, like Superman, if Superman was covered in spit up and traded in the lycra for baggy cropped workout pants and jersey dresses. 

Here’s how it all started: I arrived to bring Axel to daycare, which he attends two days a week.  I’d already taken him out of the car and walked around to the other side to get Jonas out.  Axel began to have a mini meltdown and wanted to be picked up, because he has recently decided that he should always be carried in parking lots (generally a good thing, except when I’m trying to get Jonas out of the car).  So, I’m sweating and telling Axel to wait just a minute and he’s wailing and I’m yanking on the 100 lb beast of a car seat and this woman, clearly very very very annoyed, pushes past me and the boys to get into her big black SUV (which I parked next to), pushing my car door up against us.  She does not wait 30 seconds for us to get out of the way.  She does not, once in the driver’s seat, wait for us to be a few feet away from the wheels of her big black SUV.  She sort of harrumphs past, revs the engine, and speeds off.  I mumble unpleasantries under my breath, and lug the boys into daycare. 

Encounter two: I pull into the parking lot.  The spot to the right of our car is empty.  I get Axel out of his seat, and then we go to get Jonas.  Axel once again has a mini-meltdown.  As I am trying to lift Axel up and pull Jonas’ seat out, guess who pulls up in the parking spot right next to mine?  Yup.  The black German SUV.

In case you’re wondering, the parking lot has, ohh, about 40 other spots.  Two or three of them are maybe 10 paces further from the front door than the spot she chooses next to my car, with its wide open door and its wailing toddler.  She gets out.  She pulls her daughter out of the car.  Once again, she pushes past us, and gives us a dirty look, but says nothing.  It is quite possible that I return the dirty look, or that I would have, if I wasn’t trying to balance a toddler and his sock monkey and a bag of diapers and a baby in a car seat.  They make it to the door before we do, punch in the code, and we step up to find the door slamming in our faces.

Arrggghh.

I know that there is no law that one must hold open the door for a lady toting a toddler and a baby and an armful of crap.  But 95% of the time, kindhearted people do just that.  They do it even when I’ve only got one baby in tow.  Admittedly, I’ve come to expect a little door opening.  Perhaps I’m even starting to feel entitled to a it, even though I should not. 

By this point, I was sweating under my people and stuff load.  I entered in the code, twice because I always yank on the door at just the wrong moment and deactivate the unlock function, and we lumbered into the lobby, where Axel began to slowly, slowly make his way to his classroom, studying the lines in the tile and the mailboxes on the way.  SUV lady sweeps back through the lobby, after the world’s fastest drop off, and ignores us.

A gentler, more sane person might experience the above and think, “Hey, SUV lady deserves a break.  She’s probably running late for a very important work meeting, or she’s harried because someone in her immediate family has a terminal illness, or she woke up this morning to find that her dog had eaten all of her shoes.  This is not about you.”  But I am not sane or gentle right now. I am tired and equally harried and inclined to selfish thoughts and to overanalyzing daycare drop off encounters until they become epic battles of good and evil. 

The third encounter was just like the second, with one notable exception: as we were lumbering through the lobby, SUV lady once again hurried by us.  I may have sworn under my breath.  I may have had unkind thoughts about her hairstyle.  

As I was snarking to myself, Axel looked at her and said, “Bye bye!  Bye bye,” with a friendly wave and a smile. 

SUV lady ignored this.  Yes, I could’ve been even more offended that she ignored my adorable moppet’s attempt to reach out to her before she’s had her coffee.  But, as I stopped to think about, I realized that Axel is brilliant.   He’s being the bigger person, even if he’s one of the littlest people at daycare.  He’s being friendly and kind, in the same way that I hoped that SUV lady would be friendly and kind, even though I haven’t been exactly sunshine and smiles myself.  The toddler was showing us the Golden Rule in action, loving his neighbor, making Ms. Manners proud.

So here’s our new plan: kill her with kindness.  I mean, win her over.  We’re going to start chirping good morning right and left.  We might even start singing Zippity Do Dah and doing little dances.  We’ve got an extra 30 seconds to spare to make a cranky lady’s day a little brighter, or to make a cranky lady think that we’re the craziest family at daycare.  I’d like a little wave and a door open in the morning, so it’s only right that I should offer the same to her, instead of wasting my limited energy being cranky.