I was walking out of Target this morning when I heard this little guy screaming at the top his lungs. He couldn't have been more than two and a half and he wasn’t quitting. AAH! AAH! He cried as his beleaguered mom maneuvered the shopping cart through the slushy parking lot toward her car. She had that pained expression on her face, like someone was pulling out her toenails, one by one.  I remembered the feeling well. You think that everyone is staring at you judging your child rearing and thinking how you better do something with that kid before he becomes a spoiled brat. The same tantrum in the house wouldn’t faze you half as much as it does in the raw public stage of the Target parking lot (the only worse place being the checkout line in the supermarket where you also have to run interference with the candy and gum displays).  Naturally, my first wave of sympathy went to the mother. I tried to send her energy, willing her to keep it all together long enough to buckle him in the car seat and put on the DVD player.  A little Thomas the Train and a juice box would no doubt settle him down.

It was at that point that I became acutely aware of the fact that I was having an additional, and quite unexpected, reaction to this little guy’s tirade.  Fact is, I found myself fighting the overwhelming urge to scream right along with him. Truth be told, I actually envied him. He hadn’t developed a filter yet . You know, the filter that tells you to think before you open your mouth. He hadn’t mastered the art of “keeping it all in” or “bucking up”.  “Don’t wear your heart on your sleeve” was in a future day’s lesson plan. I don’t know what had set him off. Maybe he wanted a toy and mommy told him “no”. Maybe he forgot to tell her that he had to do pee pee and now was sitting in a wet, uncomfortable pair of training pants. Maybe he was hungry. Maybe he was tired... or maybe someone simply told him about global warming, or the projected cost of a college education in 2028… who knows?  Something bothered him, he didn’t like it, and so he was letting his discomfort be known, in a very uninhibited way.  Yes, I envied him indeed.  I, too, felt pretty angry about the current state of affairs. Dieting to shed some of the holiday binging, I was, at the moment, hungry.  Last minute preparations for celebrating New Year’s Eve had me already exhausted at 11 in the morning.  I had just denied myself the purchase of a GPS system because it was way too expensive. In addition, at the age of 61, I am still paying back a student loan, and it goes without saying that global warming is a threat that makes everyone anxious. On top of all that, I had to pee. By then I had reached my own car. I got in, put the radio on really loud, and let out a primal scream. God that felt good! That kid is definitely onto something.

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