You Really Have No Idea What Someone Else is Going Through
This has been a popular GIF lately (and several variations). I have shared it… maybe you have as well…
I ran into a situation today that personified this for me.
My husband and I were shopping for groceries at Walmart. At the back of the store, we came across a woman and her kids. She was reprimanding one of the older ones, around 8 or 9 years old. I think he may have knocked over something… I wasn’t paying that much attention. But I did notice he really didn’t care about what she was saying.
My first thought was :
“I’ll throw him over my knee if you won’t…”
I know… not very nice…
I was in a dark place today. 2019 has been a difficult year. Mourning is a difficult process; it does pretty much whatever it wants, whenever it wants.
And today was a bad day.
So I didn’t pay much attention to the family after that… we finished up our shopping, and headed for the checkout line. In front of us was the same family we had encountered earlier. The two oldest boys were grabbing items from the “impulse buy” section, picking them up and then dropping them on the conveyer belt on the adjacent checkout line, over and over and over. Brothers 3 & 4 were repeatedly dropping toys from the cart. The noise seemed to be growing by the second.
I came out of my dark place again, and mumbled a few things under my breath…
About then, I really started to pay attention to the situation, and what else was going on around us.
I realized, this poor woman had 5 boys… all under the age of 10.
Holy crap…. I can’t even begin to imagine.
And the older boy I mentioned earlier, wasn’t the only one that wouldn’t listen to mom. Four of the five completely ignored her reprimands. The youngest was only 18 months, so he wasn’t deaf to her words yet.
I learned forward and whispered to my husband…
“I have a theory…”
He turned his head, and I said…
“The boys don’t respect their Mom because their Dad doesn’t respect her…”
I admit, I have no idea if this is the case, but the theory does make sense. She was being firm with her admonishments. Most any other child would have paid attention to her. But not these boys. They just did not care.
But then I noticed something else…
A woman one line over was looking at the mom… shaking her head. Whispering something to her teenaged son, and then motioning towards the mom and her sons.
And I thought “Really??”
Then I noticed the woman behind her. She was older than the first… mid 60’s I guess. And she is giving this poor mom the stink eye as well.
I’m thinking “Ladies… aren’t we all on the same team? Come on!!”
So over the course of 2 minutes, I have gone from being a grumpy bear about these boys, to readying myself for a fisticuffs with these two women one line over.
I look at the mom again, and she look so tired… she has to take a toy away from the second to youngest boy and give it to the cashier so she can pay for it.
He let out a wail that caused several people to turn around.
Talk about the last thing someone needed to happen…
But this is probably an everyday occurrence for this woman. She quickly got the toy rang up and gave it back to him.
I have no doubt she knew that eyes were on her. That had to make it all even harder for her.
And now she needs to retrieve the toy that her youngest child is grasping.
I noticed the boy staring at my husband. I leaned forward and said “Someone is looking at you…”
So we started waving at this young boy. Playing a little peek-a-boo…
Hopefully we can keep this one from a meltdown when mom takes his toy to ring it up…
And it worked…
Ahh… small victories…
I am writing this about 7 hours later. And I’m still thinking about them.
I hope her husband actually is supportive and my theory is BS… maybe it has just been one of those days.
Maybe grandma slipped them all candy earlier in the day and they were just hopped up.
But again…the point is….
You really have no idea what people are going through…
So just be nice… it really doesn’t take a lot… take the high road.
