Mean Moms Test My Compassion

I’m fuming…

At Kindergarten pick up I decided to forego the car line, and park to walk up to the door.

A lady… or woman… or maybe a human-ish person-thing, pulled passed all the cars in the car line right to the front door and into the front of the line. Ok… that’s douchey, but not horrific, I guess.

My attention shifts to a mother and son I’ve seen at pick up almost every day. She is always there with her older son who seems to have an array of disabilities. He’s a handful, and I’ve always been a little in awe at how she handles him as he is almost the same size as her and he never stops moving.

Just as the students are coming out of the front door, her older son makes a run for it. She catches him at the curb, which also happens to be right next to the car-line-butter-inner’s passenger door. As the mom is wrestling her son back from the curb my two thoughts are, “do I offer to help her out because I don’t want her to think we are all ignoring her,” and, “she probably wants us all to just ignore her and pretend it’s not happening”.

As I’m thinking about this the line-cutter gets out of her car and with a loud, “Let’s go, this is ridiculous” grabs her daughter. As she is walking around her car next to the mom with the disabled son she says, “You’ve got to be kidding me, you have to do that right in front of my door?!?!” And here’s where she made her next huge mistake – other than everything she’s ever done in life – she shoots me a, “you know what I’m talking about” look as if I’m going to give her a Hallelujah!

Oh… Hell… No… Bitch…

I give her a wide-eyed WHOA! (the one usually saved for when the kids do something awful). She keeps walking and says over her shoulder, “She’s a STUPID mother!”

By this time I’m holding hands with my son, my niece and my nephew and I looked at them wondering if it would be ok to leave them on the curb while I go to the woman’s window and unleash hell. Instead, I decided that I needed to:
a) set a good example for the few dozen kids around us and
b) that I should probably not leave three kids unattended.

So all that I managed to get out was a high pitched, “That was SO mean!!”

Not only did she just call another mom stupid, she did it in front of children! Who’s the moron here?!

Look, most of us moms suck at being parents, or at least we feel like we do most days. We all make mistakes and lose our tempers and wonder how the hell to keep from screwing our kids up while somehow keeping our sanity. To drag someone else down with your misery is the worst we can do to each other. Imagine the peace and encouragement that mom with the disabled son could have experienced if the Mean Mom had been patient, offered a kind word, smiled and told her she was doing a great job. Whatever the opposite is of that, that’s what Mean Mom did.

What’s funny is that I was just thinking yesterday about assuming the best of people. The Golden Rule, walk a mile in their shoes, and all that. But for the life of me, I can’t think of one redeeming thing about this Mean Mom. I can’t think of what might have been going wrong in her day that she would get out of her car and spew hatred to someone that was completely innocent.

But I can think of how she needs to rethink her black lip-liner with nude lipstick choice… you are not in the 90’s anymore, nor are you in a Latino gang. (I say this being fully aware of some horrific lip-liner choices of my own.)

So, to the mom who has to care for a son with disabilities, and have everyone’s judge-y eyes on you all the time: I don’t know you… you may also make horrible lip-liner choices, you may be just a mediocre mom (aren’t we all!) You might be voting for Trump, I don’t care. I’m sorry you have to deal with horrible people like that, probably more times than you can count, and I pray you keep finding the strength you need every day.

And to the Mean Mom: I know I need to kill you with kindness. I know I need to pray for you instead of glare at you at the next drop off. I realize God most likely put you in my path to test my whole, “we need to think better of each other” philosophy that I’ve been meditating on lately… so I’ll be nice. I don’t want to, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. But I’m still hoping you fall up stairs with your hands in your pockets.

P.S. I really really hope you aren’t my son’s homeroom mom. Like, a lot.

Sarah Kennedy-Sexton is newly single and a mom of two boys. She can’t decide if she should keep her married name or go back to her awesome maiden name, so for now she is going to have a hyphenated last name like someone important. She lives outside of Philadelphia and repeatedly tries, and mostly fails, at all things domestic. Also, she likes to write. Probably should have led with that. Follow her blog at Raising Danger.