Shooting Two

It finally happened.

We were in the store when my daughter decided to have a nervous breakdown and act a damn fool...and in the worst possible place, Nordstrom. All of the pseudo-bourgeois people just stopped in their tracks. It was like the scene in every Western where someone walks into the saloon. The guy playing piano near the escalators stopped playing and all eyes were on me.

The White people were fixated on me probably thinking, "He better not strike that child. I will call the police right now." The Black people were looking at me like, "You better represent! Beat that girl's ass, you know we don't let kids fall out in the store." My daughter fouled me with no time left on the clock and now I was shooting two to win the game, but which team was I on?

Pre-parenthood I watched kids go crazy in the store and usually the response from the parents went along party lines. Most Black people beat the hell outta their kids to the point that it started looking less like discipline and more like a lynching. Most White people either ignored the kid or tried to reason with them which just made me wonder how long it'd be before the kid would be beating their ass in the future. I'll admit it was a pretty ignorant way to dichotomize parenting, but I was young and didn't know any better.

So fast forward to the present and my darling child has put me under the ire of the Nordstromites. I was tempted to beat the hell outta her, but all I kept thinking about was breakfast. She had a sippy cup in one hand and an apple in the other. She chewed up some of the apple and then took her sticky disgusting hand to put the pre-chewed apple in my mouth. All the while she's saying "Yum!" Then she semi-waterboarded me by shoving the sippy cup of water in my mouth to wash down the apple.

That's how we get down in our house. Back before she had teeth, we chewed up food for her and gave it to her. She saw that I wasn't eating anything and she wanted to share, and just how I would say "Yum" to her and put food in her mouth, she did the same to me. She was looking out for me because that's her subconscious way of loving me. That kind of innocent love doesn't go away in the three hours that transpired between breakfast and walking through Nordstrom. She's upset about something and hitting her as a knee-jerk reaction to my embarrassment just didn't feel right.

I did what I never thought I'd do, I knelt down to her level and gave her a kiss on the forehead and said, "I love you. I don't know why you're upset but you can't yell and kick and scream. Everything is gonna be okay." I gave her a hug and another kiss and we continued our walk through the store. I'd like to say that she quieted down and that the Full House moment was enough, but I'd be lying. She hollered even more and this Black woman gave me a look like she sincerely felt betrayed. My daughter yelled all the way to the car and before we made it out of the garage she was asleep. Apparently that's what was wrong all along. When she woke up at home, I gave her some potato chips. She chewed one up and fed it to me.

I love you too.