Manners, by My Kid

To get to the Kid's school in the mornings, we have to pass through a tollbooth.

Since my SunPass is out of funds and so am I, I've been digging out loose change each morning. This morning, I took out a dollar, and handed it to the attendant, with a "Good morning" and a "thank you". I got a "Mmmh." in return.

As we were driving away, the Kid yelled from the backseat, "What you giving, Mommy? What that?"

I said, "I gave her fifty cents. I gave her money."

The Kid yells back towards the rapidly disappearing tollbooth, "SAY THANK YOU, LADY!"



We've been on a "mine" kick lately. I knew it was coming.

When my father would play with the Kid, he would pretend to pull an object away from her and cradle it to him, and say "mine!", at which point I would whack him in the back of the head and tell him between clenched teeth to cut that out.

But lately, her favorite sentence is "Oh that's not yours, that's mine". Always with the "Oh". I thought maybe it was from the playground, when the teachers were teaching sharing. It applies to everything in our house, regardless whether or not someone is touching it.

"Oh that's not your shoe, that's my shoe". Nope, mine.

"Oh that's not your curtains, that's my curtains". Nope, they're staying right there on the window.

This morning, I take her in to school. She's sitting at a table, finishing her breakfast, while I'm putting her lunch away. It's Passover week, and she goes to a Jewish daycare, so I had to avoid anything with rising flour in it for her lunch. Her teacher, the beloved Miss Barbara looks over at her at the table and says, playfully, "Is that your yogurt? Or is that my yogurt?"

I whip around and give Miss Barbara the scary mommy look with one raised eyebrow. "Is that where that comes from? All day long I'm listening to 'oh that's not your car, that's my car, oh that's not your bed, that's my bed'".

The beloved Miss Barbara looks away, sheepishly, and quietly says, "Could be".

I'm pulling the Kid's lunch out of her bag. I spend a lot of time making the Kid's lunch - she eats a lot of soy, and grains, and cheeses, and organic snacks. Maybe I'm obsessed, but most of the other kids start off the day with a bright pink, sugary fat Dunkin' Donut, and have Lunchables for lunch, which have so many chemicals in them that I'm sure they'll still be edible (and I use this term loosely) in thirty years. I show Miss Barbara a container. "This isn't pasta, it's a quinoa and rice blend".

Miss Barbara stares at it skeptically and says, "That's not mine. That's hers."