Tuesdays or Wednesdays are Shopping Days or, My Life with Aquatic Biology

[janradder]

As I travel the aisles of our local grocery stores, I have with me two remoras attached to the shopping cart.  These are not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill  remoras, however.  Instead of passively moving along with the cart as most remoras do, they battle me for control of said object, pushing and pulling against the direction in which I am heading.  If I leave the cart unattended, they begin to move it along on their own into oncoming people and stationary displays.  At times one or both will detach from the cart and start to wander vaguely about, oblivious to the fact that the cart has moved on and that they are placing themselves in the path of oncoming carts and people.  When it is time to load the groceries into the trunk of the car, the remoras once again detach and position themselves directly in front of the trunk so that I have to lift the bags up over them.  Don't believe what you may have heard or read elsewhere -- remoras are not helpful animals.

Comments

[st-writes.livejournal.com]

Ah, how very pleasant that sounds.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

That's us -- the happy, pleasant shoppers. We make everyone's experience in the store better!

[st-writes.livejournal.com]

You probably do -- they're so glad they're not you!

Hmm...

[barthanderson.livejournal.com]

I seem to have the same two remoras.

Re: Hmm...

[janradder.livejournal.com]

Are they just as helpful as mine?

Re: Hmm...

[barthanderson.livejournal.com]

They happen to feel verrrry comfortable at an area co-op, so they scatter like spider monkeys the minute we walk in the door.

Re: Hmm...

[janradder.livejournal.com]

Oh, god. That sounds wonderfully delightful.

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

I guess I could post about how I dealt with that and it never happened again, but one of my remoras was not autistic, so I don't know if it would be helpful.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I don't think the Aspie nature has much to do with it (aside from the vaguely wandering off). What will really help is when one of them goes back to school.

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the wandering attention and wandering off stuff seems to be fairly universal for boys. It seems like I was still telling Max to quit staring at the floor tiles and walking into other shoppers as a result when he was a freshman in high school.

The acting up in stores/demanding items IWANTNOW and whatnot got taken care of with one swift blow, for both kids, apparently. It's the only time I ever spanked either of them after they were verbal enough to reason with. Max was three, Kate was two, we were all doing the week's shopping at like eight-thirty at night, and Max went into increasing brat mode and my admonishments just seemed to worsen it. We got up to the checkstand, and he started climbing on the bars separating lanes, demanding this candy bar and that comic book and whatnot. Kate started following his lead. I pulled both the kids together and said "If you do any of that, one more time, either of you, I'm taking you both home, leaving this full cart here, I'm going to spank you at home, and then I'm going to have to come back and do all the shopping all over again and I'm not going to be very happy with you about that."

He pushed it, I did it. The clerks at the store hated me, he hated me, and even my ex-wife thought I'd gone a little overboard.

But it never happened again, not with either of them.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

Good for you!

I spanked in public, while the white ladies stare disapprovingly.

After that, I'd say: "Arie, do you need a spanking? Because as you know I'm not shy," and he believes me.

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

I couldn't really bring myself to spank in public, because I was abused, in my estimation, via excess of corporal punishment, and all I could think about was the humiliation aspect to doing that.

I don't really have any dire judgements for parents who do that, though, unless it's pretty clear that it's part of a general "Ignore the brat, ignore the brat, ignore the brat...EXPLODE!" strategy. I've seen how well that one works, with my sister and her friends.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

I was, too, and I vividly remember the humiliation factor. The initial spanking was when Arie was trying to run into the street, and frankly if I hadn't been so scared it probably wouldn't have happened.

I use it anyway, though.

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

"The initial spanking was when Arie was trying to run into the street, and frankly if I hadn't been so scared it probably wouldn't have happened."

Oh, well - trying to keep a kid from destroying himself? Yeah, a little demonstrative pain can be in order, there.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

Wow. That sounds almost exactly like what happened to me when I was three. My mother would get ,me some cheap plastic toy so I started throwing a fit. I lay down on the floor, held onto the shopping cart and got dragged behind wailing the entire time as my mother pushed it down the aisle. I still remember doing this and, in my mind at the time, I was sure my mom would give in at any moment. I had pulled out all the stops on this one and it was only a matter of time before my performance earned me that toy. That surety of success evaporated in an instant as I was yanked up by the arm, dragged out of the store as my mother left the full grocery behind where it was in the aisle, put in the car and driven home to be spanked. My initial thought was, "where did I go wrong?" which was rapidly replaced with, "What was I thinking?" LIke your kids, I never tried that fit again.

Arie and Éiden don't do the demanding things (at least not very often and they never push it after I say no a few times). At this point it's more about keeping them moving and trying to navigate the store with two oblivious kids latched onto the cart taking up two cart widths in the aisle. (And getting Arie to respond when I say something to him which -- the not responding when addressed -- is part of his Aspourettes)

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

"LIke your kids, I never tried that fit again."

Picking a few hills that you'll die on, and then demonstrating that, yes, you really WILL GO THERE if pushed seems to make a mountain of difference. I see younger dads, especially, who seem to think every hill's one to take a stand on and always want to go "Pick your battles, dude..." but naturally, I don't. Unwanted advice from everywhere is one of the less pleasant aspects of raising young children, IMO. (AND I'M ESPECIALLY TALKING TO ALL THE OLD LADIES READING THIS.)

"Arie and Éiden don't do the demanding things (at least not very often and they never push it after I say no a few times). At this point it's more about keeping them moving and trying to navigate the store with two oblivious kids latched onto the cart taking up two cart widths in the aisle."

Yeah, that's ongoing...and later on, even more fun, maybe they'll be embarrassed to be seen with you at the store. (So why they wanted to come along in the first place is a fucking mystery. Hey, I'm not having big fun, here, you're missing out on, teens.)

Then again, I have to take a similar lead with my girlfriend, at stores, and she's thirty.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

Years ago, I actually turned around and began walking in the other direction from Haddayr, as if i had no idea who this person with horrible taste in music was, when she began singing along -- at the top of her lungs, mind you -- to Whitney Houston.

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

I don't think I like your wife, anymore.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

In spite of her penchant for belting out Whitney Houston ballads, she has a lot of other redeeming qualities. That Whitney Houston thing is a pretty big strike against her, though.

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

Oh, if I held everything Evonne likes and I think is ridiculous against her...I'd be nineteen years old and moved on to a new, cooler girlfriend long ago, I guess.

The other day, I shit you not, we were driving down the road and she was singing along with "Fergalicious." And, um...I'm not a great singer, but she's completely tone-deaf. And can't remember lyrics to save her life.

I guess I could say "I love her, anyway," but I actually kinda love all that, too, the more I stay with her.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

In my defense, it was "Savin' All My Love For You."

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

Well, thank god for that. If it had been "The Greatest Love of All," I think I might have wept.

[pierogi-queen.livejournal.com]

I'm an old lady and I NEVER give unwanted advice to parents of children who are screaming and out of control in grocery stores. (I just give them nasty ugly glares while thinking - "for God's sakes, just give the kid a crack on the ass and be done with it")

BTW Jan, I thought I spanked you in the car. I'm not sure I had the patience to wait until we got home. You forgot about how you started off by throwing yourself in front of the cart and yowling, but it was getting tiring for you to keep running to catch up as I went around you each time - so THEN you got the idea to just hang on. LOL

Be thankful - remoras might get in the way, but they never scare the bejeezus out of other shoppers by emitting blood curdling shrieks for no apparent reason. (Seems like that is mostly done by little girls nowadays)

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

"I'm an old lady and I NEVER give unwanted advice to parents of children who are screaming and out of control in grocery stores."

I've never had that happen, either, FWIW. I did have a bunch of old ladies walk up and advise me to put hats and coats on my kids when they were infants and toddlers, which...surprisingly, does not become more and more welcome the more times it happens.

[pierogi-queen.livejournal.com]

Older ladies used to offer me all kinds of helpful advice like "she must have a diaper pin sticking in her" when Jan's sister would reach her 15 minute sitting in the grocery cart seat limit and start wailing at the top of her lungs. And yes, I can remember being told to put mittens and hats on kids who had just removed them in the midst of a screaming "I don't want these things on my body" fit. Funny though, these ladies never offered to take my kids for me.. afraid I might say yes and they'd be stuck I think

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

Yeah, same deal. Kid just ripped his hat off in the sun, "You should really put his hat on." It's been warm, it's cooling down, I haven't put the jackets on, yet "You know, it's COLD. You should cover them up."

It takes a village to nag a dad to death, I guess.