"Look! Focus!"

This is happening as I write it. At the mega-bookstore. They both walked in here moments ago. Unlucky for them, my notebook was already open.
People never cease to amaze me. A small boy and his mother. I’m assuming she’s his mother, and in a few minutes it becomes more apparent that she is.
He flings down a little backpack, and she barks “O.K. get your stuff out and get on it.” She tramps off somewhere, the little guy (he’s cute) spreads out some books and scribbly papers… one he sets aside and I can see that it is a cover page on which he’s carefully drawn a warrior’s shield with a bright red cross on it. Above that are the words My Baptism.
I look over at his little implements; a pencil, an eraser, a pen, blank sheets. In a side-pocket of his backpack I can see the top half of the video Shrek. He’s wearing orange pants. Orange pants! Only a kid can get away with orange pants.
Here she comes, and plops down across form him like a big old she-bear. And the word “big” is an appropriate and kind adjective. Looking as angry and dishevelled as anything that had just backed itself down a tree after finding no honey up there.
Mommie The Pooh!
She snatches up a sheet of paper and I can hear her breathing as she searches for something negative to say. “Well it says right here that the front page is to be on unruled paper containing title and name only, with no pictures or logos! So you’ve messed that up already.”
“What?” says Tigger. “But I…”
“Well never mind, you’ve gotta change that, you can’t have a picture.”
She’s scouring for more ammo. Reloading. “It says you have to mention who officiated. You didn’t do that!”
“Oh-fish-he-8-Ed?”
“The priest. Who was the priest? What was his name?”
“Well mom, I don’t know. Do you know?”
“Ah, just put anybody’s name in there” she growls, followed by (and I swear, the following is verbatim)… “I’m sure you could write about the turd you had this morning and that would be good.” Dumbfounded, I scribbled this down on a napkin immediately, for posterity… word for word!
She’s now in full edit-mode, scratching stuff out of his essay as he looks on…
“God your pen sucks,” she throws it down, across to him.
“I know, it’s not that g…”
“Look! Focus! I’m going to go and get a coffee because I can see where this is going again. We’ll be here all afternoon. Try to put as much effort into this as I’m doing and maybe you’ll pass this damn thing.” Again, word for word. My napkin runneth over.
And off she stamps to the coffee counter.
Tigger is sort of deflated, and just sitting there. Unfocussed! Well no kidding. So am I! The poor kid, he’s David Copperfield… in the early chapters! Unzips his pencil case and digs around in there but takes nothing out.
I wonder what goes on in a little kid’s head when adults act like kids, or worse.
Granted, I don’t have children to raise and can only imagine how difficult parenting can be at times, but still, when Mama Bear returns with her coffee I feel like I would like to shake HER up and say “Look! Focus!”
I DID get to say a couple words to her, but they weren’t these. She continued reading Tigger’s essay. He must have alluded to the account of Jesus’ own baptism by John the Baptist because she said “You’ll have to change this, because Jesus went fully under the water, he was not just sprinkled.”
“Really?” squeaked Tigger.
“And it wasn’t the Nile good Lord! It was the uh… oh what was the name of that river? Geez, I know I know it…”
And she looks at me as I’m furiously writing about her… “Excuse me, excuse me, but do you know the name of that river where Jesus was baptized?”
“The Jordan,” I say. My degree in theology being of some practical use for the first time in a long time.
“Yes yes, the Jordan. Thank you. Thank you.”
How polite adults are to anonymous other adults. How easy it is to show kindness and gentleness to those who matter the least.
She pencils “Jordan” into his essay and reads on. A few minutes later she looks at Tigger and says “Maybe we should finish this at home huh?”

I turn to a new clean page in my notebook.
Tigger gathers up his kidstuff, his Shrek hanging out. They are putting on their jackets to leave.
I carefully tear out the previous double-sided page of my notebook, and fold it up like a letter.
“Excuse me,” I weakly say as she turns to leave, “But, could you please take this and read it a little later on today?” And I hand her everything you have just read, right up to the word “huh”…minus the title, which only occurred to me later.
“Sure O.K.,” and she gives me that LOOK. The one with the word “Anthrax” on scrolling marquee flitting past the monitor screen of her mind. As though I myself, clad only in loincloth, were waistdeep in the Jordan asking if she would prefer total immersion to sprinkling!
But she took it. She stuffed it into her purse.
No big deal. I can rewrite it later. After all… I was there! I have the napkin notes!
But as I take a sip of my (yuck!) cold coffee I wonder… what if her interpretation of “a little later on today” is more like “right now?” What if right now she is (nostrils flaring) getting to the part about the bear “backing itself down a tree?”
Good Lord! I gather up my stuff and race out of the mega-bookstore, dissolving into the crowded street… headed anywhere downwind.