My friend recently sent me this text: “I’ve been humiliated at QuikTrip.”
‘And who hasn’t?’ I thought to myself. I know I’ve had to hose down a toddler covered in her own vomit there more than once.
But she continued: “The girls were being horrible in a long line for ice cream. The woman scolded me in front of everyone!” She went on to say that she can never return to this QuikTrip.
Now I would never claim I don’t judge people. Ha! But I will say I’m actively fighting it, and at the very least doing it silently, and sometimes I manage not to. I try to make Mr. Rogers proud, let’s just say.
I’ve never been scolded in public, or if I have it’s gone by the wayside with other things my brain has chosen to forget (along with why I walked into a room, or if I’ve read a particular picture book.) Dirty looks? Sure. Suggestions about my baby wearing hats/socks? Yes, and from panhandlers no less. Scolding another person’s kid is going over the line. Questioning a parenting decision is crossing that line. Scolding a parent in a crowded room full of strangers? QT lady became a tiny speck on the horizon of the line. Dabbing.
How dare she do that to my friend. These were my thoughts as I thumbed comforting texts on my phone. What I wanted to do was bring her a carb-laden snack after penning a strongly-worded letter to Quiktrip management, in true Angry White Lady fashion.
Instead, I tried offering my own embarrassing horror stories. How I used to put my kids in time-out when they were being awful– in the middle of the aisle, in the freezer section of Costco, WHEREVER. I’d sit there while people gave me an assortment of unsettled looks. I had that wild look of a mother enraged, red-faced and squinty-eyed. The memory of it makes me shudder. These were dark times.
My friend interrupted my commiseration to tell me she had made a decision.
What she did was this: She had her girls write an apology to the woman on soft-serve ice cream duty. The lady had said the girls were rude to her and it wasn’t the first time. The girls addressed the former incidents in their hand-written notes. My saintly friend wrote her own apology as well. They marched (literally– they live around the block) back down to the gas station with their apologies and gave them to the woman.
The woman’s response? A giant hug.
“Aw, honey. You’re doing just fine,” QT lady said to them with tears filling her eyes. My friend cried. Her oldest daughter cried. As she told me the way she handled this, I cried. I was so proud and also a little in awe. This! I want to be like this: kind.
What an amazing gift this was to everyone This is what I want to model, in parenting and in life. Opportunities to make things right instead of being right. Responding to hard situations with grace and kindness. Should we confront our humiliation with…humility?
My own kindest parenting moment happened years ago, and I was the recipient. An older woman passed by me in the grocery store. My kids were not even being particularly awful, just slightly maddening. The woman had just grabbed a can of beans and said over her shoulder “It gets easier, I promise. You’re doing great.” She smiled as she walked by, this benevolent messenger from the other side of motherhood. It was just a small moment, but I was touched and still recall it years later. I’ve even said it to young mothers wrestling their toddlers into the shopping cart.
Sometimes you can be that little encouragement in someone’s day instead of the last straw. Sometimes you’re handed that opportunity and you should grab it, or at least I try to. And sometimes you need to take a handwritten apology up to Quiktrip and cry with the ice cream lady.
