Friday, April 04, 2008

Slamming the door

My husband was at our gas station/bookstore the other day when a car drove up to the pumps, and a mid-teen boy jumped out of the passenger side, dashed around to the driver's side, and opened the door for the woman inside. My husband was impressed, all the more so because the woman appeared to be the boy's mother.

"Hey, is that your mom in there?" he asked, or something to that effect.

"Yep!" the boy said, pleased to have been asked.

Whereupon the mother launched into a detailed explanation about why no one should be impressed with the kid's apparent good manners because he was only doing it so he could sit in the driver's seat and dream about driving, and he did this as often and for as long as he could, and so she was going to sit there until he got tired of it, because she was tired of how hard it could be to get him out of the seat once he got there and... and on and on, providing highly embarrassing details of previous run-ins, being heedless of the distress she was causing everyone in the vicinity, until the kid, humiliated, slammed the door and went back to the passenger seat.

Uhmmmm...

Let us concede that even the best of children can drive even the best of parents to the snapping point from time to time. But...

Here she was, with a grown man backing her up, a grown man who had pleased the kid by approving his good manners, a grown man who would have happily helped josh the kid out of the driver's seat if it came to that, and... she ruthlessly kept slamming her son until he slammed the door...

Uhmmmmm...

Try not to do that sort of thing. OK? Please?

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