It was just another day – just another trip to the grocery store, just another check-out line…until, after answering the monumental bagging choice question (which really isn’t monumental at all, unless you’re within a certain radius of San Francisco, where plastic bags have been outlawed or some such nonsense), I was slammed suddenly by a large boulder, which flew in from the left, unannounced, smacking me squarely in the head and leaving me confused, lost, and shaken.
Well actually there was no boulder. But it might as well have been a granite crater, the way it stung and burned and hit me, hard…that teenaged checkout kid and his quiet inquisition… “Would you like help out with this, M’am?”
Dude whah?
Did he just call me m’am? My grandmother is a m’am. My mom is even a m’am (albeit a young, very pretty one). But me? I’m not a m’am (you worthless little shithead juvenile). Not nice, Janelle – stop that~!.
Well, yes, evidently I am a m’am. I know this because everybody keeps calling me it. Using my vast deductive reasoning skills, I have concluded that somehow, unbeknownst to me, I’ve wandered into m’am territory and, as we all know, there ain’t no gettin’ outta here. In fact, I’m so entrenched in m’am–hood that when people call me “miss” I look at them gratefully but knowingly, because while it strokes my ego for a moment, I know they’re just being kind. And in a way, it almost stings more.
I mean goodness, I’m only 31. Well, 32. At the end of this month.
And I know I lead a ‘m’am’ sort of life with the husband and multiple offspring and house and family vehicle and lack of stilettos, etc., but it’s just that I don’t feel like a m’am yet. I don’t feel grown up. I look it, and occasionally I act it, but I’m not really there yet. A friend of mine recently joked that she and her husband often wonder what their kids would have been like “had they been born to grown-ups rather than them.” For obvious reasons I adore this woman.
And she’s right. I mean it appears that there are people out there who feel prepared and sufficiently matured and ready for this parenting gig…or maybe they just pull off the façade better than I do. But at this rate, I’ll be grown up and settled into myself and wise enough to raise kids around the age of fifty, when I’m too old to reproduce. What a jip.
Seriously, sometimes I try to be stern and adult-like at dinner when my kids are misbehaving and I get those damn giggles right along with them and I can’t keep a straight face as hard as I try. And sometimes I make strange, random unsolicited noises solely to be loud and annoy people, just like my 5-year old. I sing 80s ditties in a horribly offensive operatic manner, driving people nuts intentionally, because it’s fun…and I think I’m funny pretty much all the time and when I get overtired I cry and lash out and complain like a 2-year old nearing the breakdown point. But yet, I’m 32…the prime child-bearing age. The ‘right time’ to be a mother, the right time to settle down and take care of other humans and guide and lead and love…to be wise and grounded and a ‘m’am.’
So, grocery store check-out guy, I just want you to know that I die a little death every time you call me that awful name and you think you’re just being polite but really you’re launching me into a new level of existential angst. Thanks for that.
And by the way, yes, of course I want help out to my car. Can’t you see how tired I am?