Growing up when I would go out shopping with my mom I would get highly irritated with her when it came time to check out at the register. She always used checks. And she rarely, if ever wrote out the info on the check ahead of time. You know Date, the name of the place you are writing the check to and then signing your name so that you only have to fill in the amount when you actually get to that point?
We would be waiting in line and I would be thinking, "Get your checkbook out woman and start filling it out!" But I never said anything because I felt that it would be disrespectful. Not sure why. I 'm sure I could have phrased it so that she wouldn't have been offended so I just stood there rolling my eyes and tapping my foot at her.
Then when we would get up to the register she would wait until EVERYTHING was rung up before writing anything. And to top it all off I would see her pen wavering above the "to" part of the check and she would inevitably look up at the cashier and say "Now where am I again?" I would get SO irritated. How in the world could you not know what store you were in or where you were?
It's not like she had eight kids to worry about or a husband who was in and out of the hospital more often than she would have liked. It's not like I wasn't the 7th of those eight children and we all know how you lose brain cells with each child ;) . It's not like she was up at the crack of dawn every morning to make my dad's breakfast and lunch and to see him off to work and then get a hot breakfast for the rest of the family.
Flash forward 25 some odd years. I stand at the cash register I am tired and my kids (of which I have only four...half of what mom had) are either whining or crying and usually I am lucky enough to only have one or two of them with me at the time. My hand hovers over the part of the check where I am supposed to fill in the name of who the check is going to. My mind is a blank. Frantically I search my mind trying to figure out what store I am in. In some situations I desperately search some place for the name of the store so I don't have to look sheepishly at the cashier and ask "Where am I again?"
Karma, it'll get you every time. I have become my mother.
1 comment:
When I was a kid and would incessantly ask for reasons when my mom would give me an order, she'd sometimes get tired and resort to "because I said so." I swore I'd never do that.
I hadn't been a parent too long before my number two son (now nineteen and in Spain, then probably about three) was doing the machine gun "why?" thing and I - you guessed it - said "because I said so."
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