There are few things I hate more than marketing with two
children. I have avoided it like I do
public toilets, only relenting in dire circumstances. Today was one of those
times. Target alone is my Zen; Target
with children is a prisoner of war camp.
But I was out of everything, my refrigerator was barren and I had
resorted to giving TIT old cans of formula for the last two days when I was
struck down with a virus and out of milk.
I had no choice. I readied myself
with a cup of black coffee (because I was out of cream) and a mantra chant to
provide me strength to survive Superfresh with two kids.
The Commander cannot leave the house these days without
dressing in full Star Wars regalia. Clad in his Jedi robe, his lightsaber
hanging from his Nike shorts he filled the top of TIT’s stroller with his
arsenal of weapons. “I need my other
water gun,” he wailed as I tried to strap a feisty TIT into the stroller. “I need the blue gun! Zac needs a gun. He
needs one too, Mommy!” I focus on the
task at hand, a rather simple on of just getting out of the house with my
sanity and two kids in tow and I try to ignore he requests for weaponry and
satiate it with an ice pop, one of the only food items in the house.
I take no list and think surely I can pull it all together
when we get there. Just the basics, I
tell myself. Nothing fancy, no crock-pot dinner tonight, we will dine on
microwavable delectables. I am happy
these days with hummus on some Triscuits but I was out of that too, so it would
have come down to macaroni all around.
The walk to the market was fine and I high-five myself mentally that I
have accomplished walking five blocks with one kid in a stroller and one
destroying pigeons and squirrels in his wake with an electronic
lightsaber. But all bets are off when
the doors to Superfresh swing open and the Commander sees the coveted and all
too present vending machines pushing crappy tattoos and plastic balls for a
quarter. “Can I have a ball? I want a
green ball. I can use it to destroy the
angry birds. I want that ball,” he says pointing to a swirly green ball deep in
the middle of the machine. And if it was
only a quarter for him to shut up, I’d gladly pay the sum and continue on with
my marketing while he’d inevitably bounce the ball behind a stack of feminine
products which would cause me to search on my hands and knees through Kotex
boxes to locate said ball. But these
people who stack these vending machines know better and the ball he wants, the
prized swirly ball is not the one, which is going to come out. With my luck, it would be a pink princess ball,
which would send the Commander into fits of hysteria. So I say No to the ball
which then sets the tone to the rest of my shopping experience.
I want this to be quick.
I want to grab a gallon of milk, some cream, a few vegetables and some
odds and ends. I want to be in and out
in under 10 minutes without any carnage and without any catastrophes. But I am sure we all know how this story is
going to end.
I make it to the produce aisle, but not before grabbing TIT
a few snacks along the way to buy his silence.
So while he is munching on some dried cherries, I take all of 30 seconds
to inspect some blueberries when I hear TIT scream. I turn to find the
Commander unloading a full water gun on his brother. The Commander is laughing his ass off as his
brother is being drenched in a water gun filled with Washington Square fountain
dysentery-laden water. I am disappointed not because TIT is crying and wet and
I should feel bad for him, but more so for that fact that now I definitely need
to bathe him after he has been shot up with water that is a bathtub for the
city’s homeless. “PUT THE GUN DOWN,” I
scream at the Commander. I scream loudly because I have to be heard over his
convulsing giggles. Every purveyor of
fruit drops the melon that they are holding and looks our way and I realize
that shouting “put down the gun,” in a crowded supermarket may be just as bad
as screaming “fire” in a crowded theater.
With my head hung low, I grab the Commander by his wrist and rip gun
from his sticky little fingers and toss it under the stroller. “You cannot
shoot your brother. You don’t shoot babies in supermarkets.” People are staring but I have already, 7
minutes into this journey, reached the “I don’t give a fuck” stage.
Undeterred the Commander moves on to a different weapon and
is a few feet ahead of us making lightsaber swooshes to the pineapple
display. In a pathetic attempt to regain
my composure and standing as a decent mother with other shoppers, I ask the
Commander what type of fruit he wants in his lunchbox this week. “I don’t want
fruit. Fruit sucks. I want fruit gummies.” It is then I realize that the
Commander is wearing his shoes on the wrong feet. I would stop to address, but I fear the looks
I would get if anyone caught the stench of his shoes when I removed them from
his feet. “Max, your shoes are on wrong,” I say. “Do you want to go and change
them?” He looks down at his feet and then up at me. “Why? This is how I like it.” So I decide
it’s not worth it and let him keep wearing them since he seems to be walking
just fine.
I had managed to get through the produce department and was
working my way over to dairy when TIT became disenchanted with the dried
cherries. Rather than handing them back
to me, he dumps the bag out all over the floor.
I try to pile them up, kicking them into a pile in aisle 2, but the
Commander has gotten a few aisles away and is trying to get something on a high
shelf. “Mommy!!! Mommy. Mommy???” he is
wailing from afar. I find him in the chips aisle trying to reach for a bag of
Lays on the top-shelf. TIT gets in on the action and is yelping and gesturing
towards the Pirates Booty that seems to be the better choice. So I grab a bag, bust it open and dole out to
both boys. The savages are momentarily
tamed and I take the opportunity to grab some milk, cream and yogurt.
I have filled the entire under-carriage of the stroller with
a week’s worth of groceries and am ready to check out before I press my luck and
try to recall any forgotten items in a final sweep of the market. But checkout is the hardest part of this
journey and I had to time it correctly.
I needed to make sure I wasn’t behind an Extreme Couponing contestant or
anyone who was going to need any extra assistance. Hoping I picked the right line, I bend over
to start unloading my haul onto the conveyor belt. TIT had been relatively peacefully once he
was mauling a huge bag or Pirates Booty and the Commander was fighting Battle
Droids and Storm Troopers right in front of the cereal aisle. I begin to place the bagged apples on the
belt when I get rammed in the butt with a lightsaber from behind. Shocked that I am being anally attacked in
the checkout line at Superfresh I jump up at lightening speed, hitting my head
on the handle of the stroller only to turn and find the Commander in the “force
push” position wanting to battle me. “Let’s
fight,” he challenges me. “I lightsabered you, Mommy. You need to fall down and
die.” Clearly, I wanted to at that moment but I couldn’t because now TIT had
discovered my other favorite part to supermarkets: checkout lane candy. I look over and he has covered himself in the
stroller with M & Ms and Twix Bars and it trying to tear open the
wrappers. “Mommy, Mommy. You need to lie
down on the floor and pretend you are dead.
Lie down. Scream, pretend you are bleeding and your guts are coming
out.” He is yelling loudly, but not loud enough to drown out TIT’s “OPEN! OPEN.”
I chose to do neither; and clean the diabetic shock-inducing
buffet off TIT and try to strong arm the lightsaber from the Commander. “Do you have your loyalty card?” the checker
asks oblivious my own personal hell which is happening feet away. TIT goes back
for a second swipe at the candy and refuses to take no for an answer. He has now inched his way forward in his seat
and is standing and trying to wiggle free from the harness to get the gum. He manages to snag a package of Mentos and
looks at it quizzically. “Put it back. I
am serious,” I say to him. He ignores me
as he always does and starts making lightsaber noises and slashing the credit
card machine to his left. “Paper or plastic?” the checker asks me again
as he is bagging the groceries. Do I
really give a rat’s ass? Plastic, paper, garbage bags? I don’t care. Just bag
it fast so I can get the F out of here before all hell breaks loose.
I make it out of the store and survive the walk a few blocks,
as I am repeatedly wacked with a lightsaber.
TIT refuses to stay in his stroller. He is hysterical and has managed to
work free from his restraints. So I stop
to adjust and realize that I am going to have no choice but to carry him the
remainder of the way. I reach in to
untangle his leg which sends my precariously balanced stroller flying. TIT was balancing the weight of the groceries
hanging off the back and when I removed him the entire stroller tips backwards,
dumping out half my groceries on the ground.
No one stops to help as I am trying to catch rolling fruit and contain
two toddlers. “Mommy? Mommy. Can you put
Zac down for a minute? Can we have a water gun fight before we go home?” Mommy,
can I have one of those? Can you open that box? Open it. Open it.” Amidst the chaos, the Commander sees a box of
Blue Bunny ice cream cones and thinks at this moment on the street; his brother
shoeless and wailing and my groceries spread across a cross walk, it is a
perfect time for a fucking ice cream cone and water gun battle.
As I throw every last item I find on the ground into the bin
on the stroller, I notice a ball of mozzarella cheese and a wedge of Brie in
TIT’s seat. He had managed to pilfer some items from the store and hide it
behind himself in the seat. Over the years, my children have managed
unwittingly shoplift a large array of odd items in our travels. Anything
stroller level is fair game and many times winds up tucked behind a guilty
toddler. I think, for a very brief
second, about going back to return the items. It would be the right thing to do
and as a good mother who is trying to teach my kids good things, I should take
back the cheese. I think this for all of six seconds until the Commander slaps
me again with the lightsaber. So I am sorry Superfresh on 5th Street,
IOU. And I do promise to repay you the
next time I market peacefully alone without my children.
