Evidently, Fear is Most Definitely a Factor for Me.

Having a kid is terrifying.  No, not childbirth.  That's the easy part.  I mean the 40 years that come after childbirth.  Since I only have a two year old, I'm not familiar yet with the fear that comes from dropping my kid off at college (and YES,  you should be VERY afraid!) or the day she gets her license and peels out of the driveway to go visit her dubious boyfriend.  I AM familiar with the terror of creating a scene in a public place- which is one of my least favorite activities, and yet it seems to happen so often.  If you know me in real life, you may have heard me refer to this as Fear Factor: Baby.

You remember Fear Factor, right?  The awful show where contestants have to perform insane stunts (i.e. jumping off of a helicopter into a lagoon, swimming to a car and trying to unlock their grandmother from the trunk before the car sinks and you have to go through a ring of 50 keys to find the right one...) or eating totally disgusting things, like blenders of liquified crickets or bull's testicles.  Ugh.  If you make it to the end and win the money, the host Joe Rogan says "Evidently, fear is not a factor for you!" and you win some tiny amount of money and then deal with intestinal parasites for the next several years- on account of the bull's testicles you just ate.  It seems to me that parenting is JUST like that, but with less Joe Rogan and more intestinal parasites.

When we take Meredith out in public, there is always a moment when you can see that there is about to be a "scene"- but can you stop it in time?  When she was a baby, it was "Oh god, throw me the diaper bag!   Find a bottle!!  Dump the formula in!!  Shake!!! Stick it in her mouth!!!" and if you make it in time, you can avoid the blood curdling screams in the restaurant that you probably shouldn't have brought her to in the first place.  These days, the major fear is causing a meltdown scene.  And no, I don't mean in Walmart.  Ninety percent of people in Walmart are high on meth- so they're not going to notice.  I'm talking about in a real place, like a library or a church- or a nationally televised sporting event.

This past Saturday, we went to the 2013 American Cup gymnastics competition.  We had tickets for the third level- which was the perfect place to contain the child.  Right away, an usher came over and told us we could move down and sit by the floor, since the event was going to be on NBC and they wanted the seats full.  Awesome?  Yes.  So we ran down there and got great seats, right behind the parallel bars and the uneven bars.  Meredith was great through all of the rotations, UNTIL the parallel bars- which were literally 15 feet from our faces- with the giant NBC camera bearing down on us.  I knew you could see us on TV, since people were texting me.

And then it happened.  Danell Leyva, the recent Olympian,  was in the middle of his routine when Meredith stood up on her chair, grabbed my hair, and yelled "WA WA WA WA WA WA" over and OVER again.  I looked at Tim and panicked.  Do I put my hand over her mouth and pin her to the ground?  Do I shove her head under my shirt?  Mace?  Does anyone have mace?!?  But there was no stopping it.  Several thousand silent, waif-like gymnastics fans were staring at the hot mess that was my kid, and several million more could likely see it on TV.  AWESOME.

Of course she did eventually sit down and shut up- it was probably within five seconds, but it seemed like I could have watched Gone with the Wind plus the bonus features in that amount of time.  We might as well have been Kim Jong Un and Dennis Rodman, casually taking in a basketball game in Pyongyang.  The eyes of the world, or at least the sanctimommies, were on us.  From what I can tell now, you thankfully couldn't see us on TV.  Everyone could hear us though, including Danell Leyva, who totally stunk and came in last.  Definitely Meredith's fault.

All in all, we survived.  No one asked us to leave.  We only ruined one gymnast's chances for Rio 2016.    No one was tasered, and no one vomited.  We survived my worst public meltdown nightmare.  No, I didn't have to bungee jump off of a bridge over an alligator infested river.  I didn't have to lay in a bathtub of hissing cockroaches.  I didn't even have to sit with Dennis Rodman.  I just had to keep my kid quiet for three hours, without making a scene on national television.  I'm not 100% sure, but I think it might have been easier to eat a plate full of Rocky Mountain Oysters while in an Iron Cross.



14 old school - the rings by doubleviking