Public Humiliation

Anytime we go out in public, it is a given that one of my children, usually Leo, will do or say something that ends in my public humiliation.  Many years ago before Tripp was medicated he took his favorite toy to the store.  It happened to be a plush toy from the movie Toy Story and its name happened to be Woody.  Tripp also had a hard plastic toy of the same character.  He distinguished between the two toys by calling the plush toy, "wiggly Woody", and the plastic toy, "hard Woody."  Anyway, we were walking through the grocery store and Tripp starts running off with his toy.  I start yelling, "Tripp, Tripp, Tripp!" and then received the normal disgusted looks of other shoppers who assume that I'm such a bad mother that instead of trying to stop my running child, I merely cheer for him to fall.  About this time Tripp rounds the corner to the next aisle and Leo, who was about a year old, figures out how to stand up in the cart.  Fearful that Leo will fall out of the cart and hurt himself, I decide that for the time being I have to let Tripp go and attend to Leo.  I get Leo all strapped back into the cart and we went looking for Tripp.  We found him in the next aisle over chasing down a nice elderly woman frantically waving his toy at her yelling, "do you want to see my wiggly Woody?! Wanna seen my wiggly Woody?!"  And the looks of disgust from the other shoppers turn into looks of horror as they expect to see a 5 year old flasher.  (Or so I imagine, I'm too ashamed to look at anyone's face at the store.)

This was Leo at the grocery store today.  He was a dog.  It required crawling around and barking.  I noticed that this particular store had a nice floor.  I looked at it a lot as I was avoiding eye contact with everyone else in the store.  But, Leo wasn't the major humiliation of the day, it was Sarah.  My father recommended we try watching this British show "Black Mirror" on Netflix.  It is very interesting.  Kind of like a Twilight Zone for technological savy times.  The episode last night had an English princess being kidnapped and the ransom was for the Prime Minister to have intercourse with a pig on live TV and then the show revolved around whether or not he was going to do it and if anyone would watch.  At no time did they show a person having intercourse with a pig.  But as our supper guests were getting ready to leave the house tonight, my daughter says, "are you going to watch that show where rich people have sex with pigs again?"-----by the way......my guests.......were church missionaries.