I know it’s important to teach my children to share. Yo Gabba Gabba has a song about it, “It’s fun to share! It’s fun to share!” We sing it at our house from time to time; I don’t think it has any other lyrics except, “Sharing with our friends is fun. Sharing with our friends is cool.” Oh no! Now I have the sharing song stuck in my head, and it’s not the kind of song I want stuck in my head on a Friday morning.
Nevertheless, yesterday, at the pool, sharing was the very last thing I wanted to do.
How ‘bout some pool etiquette people? I’m talking – pay attention to your kids! Don’t sit in the lawn chair gossiping with your friend pretending like you didn’t see your child rob a toy out of my baby’s hands. UNBELIEVABLE!
Oh, I know she’s not a baby anymore, but she’ll always be MY baby. (I can’t believe I just said that. I sound exactly like my mother).
Seriously, this is what happened.
Awkwardly, I pushed my double stroller with two kids, three beach towels, diaper bag, and gigantic beach bag into the pool area. I grabbed a lawn chair to move it to the shade, but the black metal burnt my hands. Therefore, I grabbed a beach towel to hold the chair to move it to the shade.
That’s right – in Texas, we use beach towels like oven mitts on lawn furniture like handling a hot casserole dish.
Anyway, as soon as I sat down, two kids came running up and pulled toys out of my beach bag! SERIOUSLY! I wouldn’t lie to you people. I was actually digging in said beach bag for SPF 7000, sunscreen stick, and earplugs. I snatched the toys back faster than a mother snapping turtle protecting her eggs (if snapping turtles sat on eggs, which they don’t. They bury them in the sand. You get the picture – even if it’s imaginary).
Back to reality. I was so stunned, I didn’t know what to do. My own two children still sat in the stroller. I wondered, “Where the heck is their mother? Why isn’t she intervening?” Both of the children were old enough to know better. I told them they should go find their mother and ask her for some pool toys.
As I said, I know it’s important to teach my kids to share, but it’s also important to use some manners! I have no problem sharing our pool toys if the children are polite enough to ask. Bunder knows not to take things that don’t belong to him, and he was by far younger than these two.
During the long process of readying my kids for the pool, I moved the beach bag behind me and covered it with a towel to prevent the swiping kids from swiping. That’s right, the entire time I was lathering sunscreen, the vulture children were circling and swooping trying to reach inside my bag.
Immediately upon entering the pool, one of the children in question grabbed Kiki’s toy out of her hands. She screamed bloody murder, and I grabbed the toy back saying, “She’s crying because you took her toy away. She was playing with that. It’s not nice to steal toys.”
Inside my head I’m thinking, “Hello! Mother of thieves! Don’t you see what’s happening here?”
At one point, the other little boy snatched a snack out of Kiki’s hands. I’M NOT KIDDING!
This situation continued for quite some time making my pool trip rather unpleasant. Eventually the other kids realized this mother hen wasn’t going anywhere. I wasn’t about to sit in a lawn chair (I can’t with the age of my kids, anyway). I thought about making up my own repetitious, annoying song, “Go away! Find someplace else to play! Here’s a permanent marker. Tattoo your mom for her.” But then, I’d be acting like a child.
What about you? Have you had any run-ins with pool bullies?
Can you imagine someone stealing from this precious bathing beauty?
