I thought I’d start my day by stating two things:
1. I’m starting the process of submissions to a plethora of publishers. For this, I will be creating a portion of the site devoted to the progress of my book so you may know (those of you truly interested).
2. There was a time in my youth where I was school shopping with my mother in K-mart. Upon reaching the check-out line, there were two men in the line together next to ours. A little bearded man in a motorized wheelchair, and a very large man helping him with the groceries.
Now you may wonder why I take note of this at all. I’ll tell you the only reason I remember any of this is because of the nature of said groceries. The little man was buying what seemed like 300 bags of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. They were everywhere. He had two carts full of them. I remember the cashier was diligently ringing each bag and trying to bag them too. I imagine you had to ring them up individually because there would be no conceivable way to count how many there were in a timely manner. Further, I suspect that K-mart registers couldn’t handle the calculation: $4.54 X too-many-damn-Reese’s without getting “EPIC FAIL” printed all over the receipt.
Then came the screaming child.
There was another line nearby with an insolent procreation that wouldn’t stop screaming about something incomprehensible. All out tantrum. This is where my mother would describe the dead-fish dance.*
The dead-fish dance is when a kid throws themselves on the floor and starts flopping around like a fish out of water. Arms could be flailing, but sometimes they stay stiff at the sides and they really do look like fish out of water. Then again, it also resembles a spasmodic seizure.
In any case, every parent has been there at some point. They want something, and you tell them they can’t have it. I’d just walk away when it happened. I’d say, “You want to throw a fit? Okay. I’ll be in the car, going home.”
I’m also told if you throw a bigger fit than the child, they’ll be too embarrassed to do it again.
* Excerpt not actually spoken by my mother. Words extrapolated from countless storytelling over the years.
Never mind the fact that dead fish don’t actually move. It would more accurately be the dying fish dance, or the fish-out-of-water dance. But I digress…
The screaming went on long after the Reese’s fanatics left and well into our check-out. It rose to a point where K-mart could have probably started a sale on earplugs, duct-tape, and interrogation equipment. But the most memorable thing was what our cashier did. As he was finalizing the purchase and tearing the receipt for us, he moaned loudly and said, “Somebody get that kid a Reese’s!”
No. I didn’t have a point in telling you all that story. I just felt like sharing.
