This morning, I stopped into Walgreen's in order to pick up a couple of things I needed for the day. As I was searching for cranberry juice, which was not available in a single serving size, I had to go down the grocery aisle. When I went to pick up a bottle of juice, I was hit on the head by a ball, and I heard laughter on the aisle behind me. A child soon appeared, smiling, around the corner of the end of the aisle. He was still laughing and since there was no mother's or father's voice upon the ball going over the shelving, I assumed the child was without his parent on the opposite aisle. He did nothing but look smug and continued to laugh while moving by me without saying excuse me. I said, "That hit me in the head." Only then did he say a sheepish and none-too-convincing "sorry" followed by more snickering with his sister, who had then appeared at the top of the aisle.
I walked to the front of the store and as I turned to head toward the cash register, I came upon the children's mother, who was calling for them from the front of the store at the next aisle over. I said, "Your children just threw a ball over the aisle and it hit me on the head."
Her reply was, "I am sure it was an accident."
This really pissed me off. She has no regard for whether I was o.k. or not, and did not reprimand her child in any way for throwing balls around the store. I replied, "If they were with you, maybe it wouldn't have happened."
I walked toward the register, and once she got her children to listen to her and meet her at the front of the store, she walked by and said, "I hope you're happy, now. You've made a seven year old cry. Do you see him crying?"
I replied, "Again, maybe it wouldn't have happened if you had been parenting them. I'm lucky that the ball didn't hit something heavy or hard on the top shelf and hit me on the head." (Directly behind me on the aisle were two-litre bottles of soda. If one of those had fallen, not only would it have hurt more than the ball, but it might have covered me in splattered sticky liquid, too.)
This woman, dressed in boots that cost more than my husband will take home in his paycheck this week, left the store and got into her Infinity SUV, the biggest they make. When I walked by her vehicle, she rolled down her window and repeated, "I hope you're happy with yourself."
I looked her in the eye, and said, "I hope you are, too."
She continued to rant out the window as I got into my car and drove away. She behaved as if the ball flying over the aisle was my fault somehow, because I was standing there. It is no accident when a ball flies over the aisle in a store. Children need to be parented and to be told that it is not appropriate to play with toys in a store. Gyms are the appropriate indoor ball spaces, not pharmacies.
I guess I performed a public service this morning: maybe the kid will refrain from ball throwing in stores in the future, and that will save someone else from getting hurt. Not only that, but had the soda knocked over, I would have had to travel back home to change, missing work hours, while this woman drove off in her expensive vehicle, obviously not going to any job at all. What really kills me is that the woman thought I was in the wrong for saying something! My children have never, ever done anything like that in a store. Of course, they were always by my side or within my sight, so even if they took something off a shelf or out of a basket, I was aware of it. I could intercede when they were young so that they knew what was appropriate behavior and what was not. Even if we bought a ball, we did not bounce it in the store. That was for outside, later. Some people say, "You're very lucky if your child never did x,y or z." I don't think parenting is luck. It wasn't good fortune, but rather consisten, effortful, mindful parenting that avoided such "accidents."
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