1. Can I get my own grocery cart?
This sounds benign enough until you find yourself shopping with the equivalent of a poorly trained NASCAR driver with no concept of ankles. You spend the entire shopping trip with the feeling that gremlins are chasing you with intention of running into your heels as many times as possible. Other innocent shoppers are playing an impromptu game of Frogger as your little one flies through the grocery store filling his cart with donuts, Little Debbie cakes, and the tears of the Lord. It’s like a temporary hostage situation.
2. Can we read this (long, irritating, piece of shit) seek and find book?
There is nothing more terrifying than reading some sort of “I Spy” book at bedtime with a tired and cranky 4-year old. If you help them, they are extremely unappreciative. Some would say down right hostile. “I CAN DO IT MYSELF,” to which you are thinking, “No you can’t or we’d be done with this f*ing book by now.” If you don’t help them, it takes all night and you start to feel like you might have a nervous breakdown over an “I Spy” book.
My recommendation:
Skip two or three pages at a time. But be careful, parents. They catch on to this shit real quick.
3. Who put this in the trash?
This could be the 25th piece of artwork produced that day (and let’s be honest, it sucks) that is overtaking your kitchen counter like a colony of piss ants. You always think (because you never learn) that your little one won’t notice. But then they decide to recycle something for the first time in their lives and see that you’ve thrown away their claim to fame as the next Picasso.
“AWWWWW, WHO PUT THIS IN THE TRASH?”
The terrified parent has the following two options:
1. Say, “Put what in the trash? Oh, my! Who would throw that away?” (Then claim it must have been someone else and you have no idea. Then you fish it out of the trash and put it on the fridge over top of something else because there’s not a SINGLE EMPTY SPOT.)
2. Claim the dog tore it up and you had no choice. Then offer them a donut.
4. Can _____ (the little asshole) come over and play?
Admit it, it’s the one kid who always does something like color on your couch or say “fuck” in front of your kids (and if your kid is going to say fuck then by god they are going to fucking learn it from you). This kid is your child’s favorite person in the world and they will be forever.
(We don’t currently have any visitors like this, which leaves me to assume that MY child is the one saying fuck and coloring on your stuff. I’m sorry.)
If you’re thinking that your kid doesn’t have any friends like this, please reference the sentence above.
5. Can we go to Gattitown (or Chuck E Cheese or other such shithole magnet for kids crawling with E.coli, boogers, and the flu)?
This question causes me to get an instant headache because I can’t think of a good reason we can’t go except I fucking hate it. I think about saying “We don’t have the money,” but then I remember that my mom used to tell us that when we asked to go to McDonald’s. This lie led to me telling my 1st grade teacher that we “don’t have enough money for McDonald’s” which led to some uncomfortable meetings for my parents with the school.
You’ll go and end up with diarrhea for two days after. Look at the bright side; you might lose a couple of pounds and have a built in excuse for not going the next ten times they ask. “Mommy almost died last time, kids. You don’t want me to die do you? DO YOU?”
Don’t be surprised if they don’t answer immediately.