Today I had an “incident” at Wal-Mart that left me somewhat frustrated by my inability to have confrontations with complete strangers. So since I was unable to debate the legitimacy of my point with the rude lady at the store, instead, I will immortalize her boorish behavior through my writing.
It all started off pretty innocently. I took my son to the store to buy some baby food for the upcoming week. A simple chore by any standard, right? Now, to fully understand this chore, you need to know that all baby food is not created equal. There are three “levels” of baby food. As your baby becomes more comfortable with solid foods, you move him up these three levels. The baby food companies make it real simple on the label to see what level you are buying.
So, I was minding my own business when a young woman approached me. She wanted to know at what age it is appropriate to move her baby from one level up to the next level. Now, parenting is a complicated thing for sure. There are as many opinions on parenting as there are parents. When approached with a question on a complicated question, I prefer to take the, “My opinion is. . .” instead of the, “The right answer is. . .”
I told her that I thought it wasn’t so much of an age issue as it is a development issue. As I was reaching for one of the food packages to show her the label, another woman from down the aisle interrupted me.
“Actually,” she said, as her tightly crooked nose pointed accusingly at me, “you are supposed to feed them first foods at 6 months, second foods at 8 months, and third at 9 months.”
Now, I know for a fact that that is a pretty good timeline when your baby might be ready to move up, but if you read the labels on the food, it’s pretty clear that you should move your baby up a level when they start showing certain abilities such as sitting up, crawling, and making chewing motions. I felt like retorting back at this lady and her snotty unasked-for answer. I wanted to point out to the young woman the differences between the rude lady’s toddler, who had been fussing the whole time, and my perfectly-behaved baby boy who smiles at random passers-by, and then ask her whose opinion she should take. Instead, I put my head down and finished my shopping.
Afterwards I couldn’t help but wonder if the rude lady would have been so confrontational about the topic had I been another mom in the store, rather than a dad. Now, I know I shouldn’t be so sensitive, and that there are just some people who have to be “right” about everything (if you are one of those people, I want you to stop reading and never come back to my blog, seriously), and this lady may have been one of those people. Still, it was almost like she was defending her own personal turf that I was on. The way she directly contradicted what I had just said made me think that she wasn’t so much trying to help the young woman but rebuking me.
In any case, I went home, got a smile from my boy, my wife listened to my story, and now I get to write about it, so really it’s all good.
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