The Mommy Drive By - I Have Had Enough.

I've honestly had enough. I thought I'd had enough when the drive by-ers started to make me mad rather than hurt my feelings, and I thought I'd had enough when I transcended anger and started joking about it. But I think now, now is the time when I've really had enough, because now they start with me and I'll get their asses fired. And quite frankly, I think you all should join me in my efforts. It may not eradicate the drive by entirely, but at least I can be left alone at the grocery store.

I don't know about you, but what happens to me is that I always seem to get the drive by when the kids are actually being pretty good. The times that one of them suddenly gets a wild hair up his butt and darts out into traffic, or takes off his clothes and streaks down the street? Nothing. But I suppose that's how it works. Chasing after my naked child with a pair of underpants prepares me for criticism. The true drive by is like the Spanish Inquisition. One minute you're minding your own business and the next minute you're in the comfy chair.

Alex and I were at the grocery store last Saturday, beetling around and picking up things to grill out for dinner. We are quasi-vegetarians, so mostly it's turkey dogs and tofu pups that get grilled, and this is what we were tossing in the cart. We'd just come from swimming lessons, and Alex was feeling pretty mellow. We passed by an employee, a senior citizen with a poodle-do curling out from under her Dominick's cap. She was standing in front of a little electric grill. On the grill were samples of maroon-colored smoked sausage and grayish, taupe-colored liverwurst. Liverwurst always reminds me of poo. It doesn't really look like poo, but that doesn't stop the thought from popping into my head anyway when I see it coiled and glistening on the grill. The woman made me feel slightly anxious and uncomfortable, like I needed to avoid her at all costs, but I couldn't remember ever seeing her before and she wasn't doing anything at the moment but offering samples of poo, so I pushed the feeling away.

She asked me if we wanted to try a sample. I did not, but for whatever reason, I was feeling all "why not?" at the moment, forgetting that the answer is, "Because it's disgusting," and asked Alex if he wanted to try one. He said yes, and the woman said to me, "You take it off the grill for him."

Which is fine, I certainly understand her concern of him being burned and me suing the pants off Dominick's, so I grabbed a piece of smoked sausage that had been speared on a toothpick. The liverwurst, I knew, would probably just end up all over the floor after he chewed it briefly, then spit it out. Then he'd carry on for awhile after, howling that he was dying and needed water, and I didn't need that drama, so I handed him the smoky sample and said to him, "Here, sugar pie. You'll probably like this one the best."

"Why?" asked the woman, except that it was less of a query and more of a combative demand, and I immediately got my back all up and looked at her in a way that would suggest to a reasonable person that they needed to step off.

"Because he's my son and I know what kind of food he likes," I said. Obviously.

But apparently that wasn't good enough for her, because she shot back in a really snotty tone, "Don't you allow him to try new things?"

"That's enough," I said, looking her straight in the eye, and she must have gotten the message this time because she shut up.

Alex said, "I can try the other one, if you want."

"No," I said, probably more sharply than was warranted, "we're done here."

Who says something like that? Who? And for what purpose? And that's the beauty of the drive by, isn't it? It comes as such a surprise that most of the time you just stand there goggling like a fish, and don't get any righteous anger built up until the perpetrator is long gone. But not this time.

I walked to the front of the store and flagged down the first man I saw in a white shirt and a tie, a Mr. Rodriguez.

"Are you the manager?" I asked.

"Yes, I am," he said.

"I'm sorry, but I need to complain about something," I began, and told him what happened. When I got the punchline of the drive by, he actually gasped a little bit.

"I come here for groceries, not a parenting lecture," I said, and by the end of the story I was getting a little too animated for my own tastes and apologized to him, telling him that I don't normally complain and maybe I'm a little more upset by this than I thought I was.

Mr. Rodriguez, to his credit, apologized profusely and said he would speak to her. I then saw him approach her but didn't stay to see the show. He ended up hunting me down in the frozen food section to apologize again and reassure me that she had been spoken to.

When I got home, Steve was sitting on the sofa, watching baseball.

"You are not going to believe what happened to me at Dominick's," I said.

"Did you get in a fight with that old bat that hates kids?" he said, and then I remembered her. It had been awhile since I'd been in that particular store, and I forgot all about her. She's always handing out free samples and berating kids that she feels get too eager to take the cookies off the tray, and she's always got something slightly crappy to say about all things, all the time. I wish I'd remembered that before I decided to be so permissive and let my kid eat ground-up pig eyeballs.

Last weekend was my opening shot in the war of Me v. Free Sample Lady. I didn't get her fired this time, but if she does it again, I swear I'm going to make it my mission in life.

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I do not know where the cartoon came from. I think it belongs to Toothpaste for Dinner, but the website is under construction and I had a hard time searching for it.

UPDATE: Beth in the Comments Lounge says the cartoon was created by Natalie Dee.