I am at Target during lunch buying the 5 things I always buy every Tuesday at Target. Turning the corner and coming towards me 20 yards away is a young mother, dragging a cart full of paper towels and such, and two young children. One of the children, perhaps 4-5 years old is screamcrying “Buy me lunchbox! I want lunchbox!,” while holding said lunchbox.
He is very very loud.
Judging people is not nice. Judging people you know nothing about is foolish and unkind, and not the kind of thing good people do. Let’s not let that stop us. I pegged her instantaneously as a nice lady who belonged to the non-corrective oblivious to all others school of child-rearing. True to form, she was taking no steps to deal with the situation.
Not my problem.
But then, suddenly, it was.
As we are about to pass the child steps in front of me, looks me straight in the eye, and scream cries “Buy me lunchbox! I want lunchbox!”
I pause for a moment, waiting for the mother to step in and do something. But she doesn’t. She is actually past me now, leaving me to face her spawn.
So… I look down at the kid, curl my lip and sneer…
It’s important here to discuss this curled lip and sneer in detail. It is literally a gift from God and a terrible terrible burden thrust upon me. I have a face capable of an expression that instantaneously engenders hatred. Remember that kid in the Maga hat? My sneer is at least ten times more punchable. It contains privilege, indifference, smug contempt, disdain. It’s undeserving insouciance makes Chevy Chase’s mugging look earnest and sincere. I can instantly start a fight just by flashing it at the wrong person. My wife has threatened to fucking kill me if I ever look at her like that. I would get sent to my room or punished as a child just for giving my parents this look. It is the nuclear bomb of facial expressions, and I usually keep it well away from sight.
But, at this moment nobody can see me but the kid. I reveal the mask of my curled lip sneer at him and hit him with about 45 megawatts of smug contempt (or maybe that look is the real me and the mask is what I show in public. It’s hard to tell.)
I lean down, look at the kid who has stopped screaming in sudden shock and I sharply say “No!” Loudly but firmly.
This is apparently more than the child can bare. He falls to the ground like he has been shot, and screams even louder.
I Am trying to figure out how to extricate myself. Do I step over the flailing child?
The mother confronts me. “Excuse me” she says softly and reasonably, in the same tone of voice that didn’t work when she was talking to her kids. “Don’t talk to my children like that.”
I am dressed well and appear perfectly normal. The nuclear sneer that just floored her child has been safely put away. She expects an acknowledgement or apology. Instead I say “Don’t tell me how to speak to beggars and I won’t tell you how to raise brats.”
I step over the child and make my exit turning my back on them both.
Except.
10 seconds later the kid is in front of me, screamcrying “Buy me lunchbox!” Again. I guess he misinterpreted his mother’s comments to me to mean that she was taking his side and that I now needed to buy him lunchbox. Or something. Anyway, here he was.
The mother is still like two aisles away trying to wrestle another child and shopping cart to come after her progeny who has now fixated on me as the buyer of lunchboxes. The kid is now far enough away from his mother that this is getting uncomfortable. I want to escape, but I don’t want to be accused of kidnapping if the kid follows me. I don’t want to cause her any discomfort by leading her kid away. At the same time, I don’t want to cause a scene and have to deal with investigating Target employees. If she says the wrong thing to them or makes an accusation this could get uncomfortable. Than too, it looks like this lady is no longer stunned by my beggar comment, and has had enough time to build up some indignation and might have a few choice words for me.
I need to escape before the mother arrives and I need the kid to not follow me. I have maybe five seconds to act before the whole situation goes tits up.
The kid is now holding up the lunchbox and not so much screaming as mewling pathetically that he wants lunchbox. It’s like he senses that I am trapped and about to give in.
I hit him with the sneer and the “No!” again, full power. Instantly he screams and falls to the ground flailing his little legs and arms in a full blown temper tantrum.
And I make my escape.
