Belligerence and Table Manners

“Peanut.”
Picks up the bag and looks at it, “No. Peanut. But-ter.”
“Fuck you.”

Apparently I’m not the only one who is rife with belligerence as of late. The above exchange just took place between my husband and my mom. They are sitting on the floor filling Easter eggs for The Boy and The Girl for tomorrow morning’s ass crack of dawn egg hunt. They, like most children, intuitively know when it’s a holiday and so thus get up at least an extra hour earlier. It’s really very lovely. And so much appreciated.

Maybe it’s the full moon. Maybe it’s all the wind. Maybe it’s the up and down temperatures happening here with the weather. I don’t know, but I’m sort of glad to see that I’m not the only one oozing belligerence around here. Gives me the freedom to really let it rip when the mood strikes. And allows me to not feel quite so guilty when I tell my husband (or total strangers in my head) to fuck off. It’s amazing what hearing your mom say it for you will do for a girl.

The Boy has been utterly belligerent today in the way that only a going on 6 years old kid can be. We splurged and went out to dinner tonight and he sat on the dinner table. In the restaurant. During dinner. I was aghast. That is something you just don’t do in my world. I’m sort of a stickler for table manners. One of my biggest rewards as a kid was to get to go out to dinner with my parents. So I figured out early on that the only way to keep getting to go out to eat was to be really, really good during dinner. So when The Boy uses his crayons as missiles, I tend to get a wee bit tense.

My mom is filling plastic eggs with jelly beans; alternating eating them and then putting some in the eggs. When she found a particular flavor she really liked, she immediately turned to her son-in-law, opened her mouth and asked what color it was. At least now I know where The Boy gets his table manners.