The other week, in a moment of temporary insanity, I took my children hiking. Now, faithful readers of this column might remember the last time I took my children hiking: the whining; the begging; the final, feeble stagger back to the car. (The kids didn’t do too well, either). Remembering this, those same faithful readers are probably shaking their heads right now and saying to themselves, “Another hike? What was she thinking? Doesn’t she remember the Red Mountain Death March of 2004? The Abominable Snowbowl Meltdown of 2003?”
The short answer to all of these very valid questions is: of course I don’t. I’m a parent: I don’t remember anything. In fact, it is only the conscious forgetting of the many terrible ordeals I have suffered throughout the years that enables me to make it through the day without twitching. This planned obliviousness is also why I now must ask you, faithful readers, to help me out. The next time you see me and my children in the parking area of anything even remotely resembling a hike, please beat me about the head and shoulders with the heaviest edition of Richard and Sherry Mangums’ Flagstaff Hikes you can find. Trust me: I will thank you for it in the morning.
As you have no doubt by now guessed, on this most recent of hikes there were no faithful readers, with or without the Mangums’ tome. Luckily, though, there was something even better: other people’s children behaving badly; behaving, if possible, even a little more badly than mine. True, mine (or at least Clyde) were whining; but theirs were whining louder. Mine (again, Clyde) were begging to be picked up and carried; but theirs were begging for it even louder. And finally, mine (yep, Clyde) were falling down, scraping a tiny bit of epidermis off of their knees and then howling like they were in the amputation ward of a Civil War hospital; but, again, theirs were howling louder.
It was wonderful: there is just something so freeing about somebody else’s children behaving worse than your own, even if it is only by the smallest of degrees. For one thing, it means that you get to be the benevolent one, the one who smiles understandingly while oozing munificent platitudes like: don’t worry; it’s ok; and, these things happen.
Oh, how I cherish those rare moments when I get to be the understanding other mom. Some people, when they get on an airplane, ask to be seated as far away from the babies as possible. Not me–I like to be in the seat right behind them, because I know that if a pair of three month old twins with ear infections can’t make my children look good, then nothing will.
And, though it may seem cruel for me to wish for another parent’s discomfort, as the one who has been on the mortified other end of the stick all too often, as the one who has apologized sheepishly one too many times as someone else’s child comes running into the house crying and sporting a goose egg on their forehead while my own child comes strolling in nonchalantly swinging the world’s biggest whupping stick–well, all I can say is that I think I deserve a little slack.
In the end I actually enjoyed our most recent hike: although my children–ok, Clyde–at one point flopped on the trail, crying piteously, theirs flopped just a little ways off, crying even more piteously still. In fact, factoring in the O.P. (Other People’s) children quotient, our hike ended up being so enjoyable that I found myself dusting off my old ambition to someday hike the Grand Canyon with Clementine. Yikes. My only hope now is that, somewhere between the back porch at the El Tovar and the beginning of the Bright Angel Trail we’ll run into a faithful reader, Mangum book at the ready.