The first moment of real parental mortification for me was when my tiny daughter, not even three, marched up to an enormous man sitting outside Coles, complete with beard, tatts all over and interesting dental arrangement, patted him on the knee, narrowed her little eyes and said, "Only dirty, stupid people smoke."
Her entire tiny life flashed before my eyes as his eyebrows went up and then my life flashed before my eyes as his gaze settled on me. In that moment, when all sensation bar cold fear ceased, I had no idea that it was about to get worse.
"Did your Mum tell you that?" Mr Beefcake asked her.
She popped her hands on her hips and gave him a firm nod.
"Yes."
I was so frozen in mortification and fear that I couldn't even defend myself. I had told her no such thing but I knew precisely who had. Fortunately for me, Mr Beefcake was not as nasty as he looked.
"Well your Mum's a very smart lady," he told her.
"I know," she agreed two milliseconds before I snatched her up and ran for the safety of Coles.
"Oh yes," Charles said breezily when I confronted him about it, "I'm working on some early indoctrination to make sure she heads in the right direction."
I suggested that perhaps we could work on indoctrination that wouldn't get me knifed in a car park, thank you so much. I wasn't surprised that Charles found the whole thing enormously amusing. He wasn't within striking distance of Mr Beefcake's enormous knuckled Christmas ham masquerading as a hand.
In that case we could have seen it coming. It wasn't a stretch from what she was being told to her telling someone else the same thing. Unfortunately kids are not restrained by what they've been directly told. Sometimes they seem to wing it with a mish mash of creative imagination peppered with something you've told them in the past. Take, for example, the time Charlotte confronted a man with no arm, shaking her finger at him and telling him, "It's your own fault, you should have listened to your Mama and kept it inside the car."
And my other favourite, when she marched up to an enormously tall man with skin like ebony and said, "How come your skin's all black?" That wouldn't have been so bad except that in the time it took for him to identify me as her Mum and give me a questioning glance, Miss Three gave him some possible options;
"Is it because you don't like having a bath or did someone leave you in the oven for too long?"
I think this one followed on from an explanation of the term "a bun in the oven" relating to babies growing inside their Mum coupled with an explanation of why we keep checking our food while we're cooking. That and my showing her how black the face washer was after I'd scrubbed her with it in the bath.
I'm not always the one present when these little faux pas take place. Charles has been treated to his own stellar parenting moments including a delightful little cultural gaff when Charlotte, freshly clued up by her educational television programs, said hello to their Vietnamese server in Chinese. And kept saying hello in Chinese, louder and louder, because the poor woman didn't understand Chinese.
What got me thinking about all of this was the latest Charlotte-initiated cringe moment. In an effort to cheer her up over there not being any preschool today (school holidays) I took Madam through the McDonalds drive thru for lunch. The young man that served us had a bit of a cold, making his voice a bit raspy and weird, but he was delightful and chatting cheerfully to Charlotte through the window while we waited for the EFTPOS payment to clear.
"Excuse me, can I ask you a question?" she asked, very politely.
"Go ahead," he told her.
"Why do you look like a man and sound like a little girl?"
As my toes curled he looked at me in confusion.
"What did she say?"
"Um...she's just really excited about getting a happy meal," I muttered.
And from the back seat, clear as a bell, came "I SAID..."
Words fail me at times like this but I can't help thinking that maybe there is something to that old adage that children should be seen and not heard.
* I would be especially delighted if you would leave a few examples in the comments telling us about your own "out of the mouths of babes" cringe-worthy moments.
my little brother when he was about 3 was asked the rather inane question 'what do you want to be when you grow up?'. after a thoughtful pause he confidently replied 'a bank'. and why would that be? 'i would have all the money i ever needed.'
ReplyDeletelittle sister was about 4yrs old sitting at the table for dinner with the whole family, hears the milk truck rumbling by. jumping excitedly up from the table to do the only chore she has, bringing the milk shouts 'ah shit, the milkman!' serious looks from mother and giggles from the father while the three older siblings try not to make eye contact with anyone.
i think a blog on embarrassing comments from parents to children in public would also be warranted here. or maybe that's my own history . . .
I forgot to mention my own moment. When I was eight I was quite an advanced reader and had stumbled across "Valley of the Dolls". I was in the bank with my Dad and while the teller was processing his transaction I turned to him and, quite out of the blue, said, "Dad what's a prostitute?" So funny.
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