Ellie is blessed with family who cares deeply about her education- enough so to give her monetary gifts toward her college of choice later on. Which means, of course, I had to truck down to the bank, snacks, toys and carseat in hand in preparation for the painful process of opening a savings account in a dependent's name and not your own. I was prepared for the long wait. I was prepared for the hemmming and hawing, because, of course, I had a brand-y new teller who hadn't done this yet. However, I was not prepared for the unmitigated and abrupt anger at an ignorant comment made innocently, without a trace of malice.
I had to update our files while I was there, since it had been a while. I answered questions about Rich- his ss#, confirmation of his job, his work phone number. When the young gentleman got to me he asked with a smile,
"Are you still a teacher or don't you work anymore?"
It was meant to be a kind insinuation that I stay at home with the little booger chewing on his carefully aligned pencils. I, however,saw red and honed in on the unassigned soapbox of motherhood all of us, must at times, claim as our own.
I wanted to tell him that I probably "worked" more that day by 5 a.m. than he will all day, after dragging his hung-over self out of bed to a job where he can sit on his butt and punch numbers until his hour long lunch break when he'll order a pizza and call his girlfriend on his work line. I wanted to tell him that it takes me less time to shower, do two loads of laundry, make a months worth of baby food, pay all the bills, play peek-a-boo and make a diaper run than it did to run the Depp gel through his Pauly D hairdo. I wanted to say all of those things, but didn't. Know why?
I got to hear my kid say my name this week. Wave hello. Feed herself an avocado and some wheat bread. Learn the beginnings of walking. And if I was "working" I would have missed it. I would have missed it all.
So, I let the boy off the hook. He doesn't know any better. Until he comes home someday to a wife and a baby and tells her the reason why he couldn't take out the garbage is because he's so tired from "work". I'll let her handle that one.