The mother pluckin baggage area

Shopping with kids can be a pain in the arse. Forget about looking for anything for me, they are going off in all directions, all the sparkly new stuff is too much of a distraction. That's usually about when the wee dance kicks in and we take a detour for the nearest dunny. 

Self service checkouts are stressful with kids. They all want to scan thier own stuff, and will chuck a hissy fit at the checkout because they want to scan it themselves. If you are extremely lucky they will loudly refuse help when clearly they are having trouble. They're fighting over shit to scan and as soon as they hear the beep, they want it on their person right there and then. 

If that's not bad enough, you hear an annoying lady voice, not unlike the one on automated phone calls, that you inevitably tell to fuck off at some stage. She is telling you, "Please put item in the baggage area".

Except it is not in the baggage area, it is on the person who is screaming like a banshee because they want to carry it now! Like NOW! That's when the dragon lady within you starts rearing her ugly head, which you have to keep down, because you're already attracting a bit of attention now from everyone within thirty metres. You calmly try to convince the child they have to put the item on the goddam baggage area. Not unlike a princess when her son has just refused to high five the prime minister, except I was not crouching down. The queen would be proud of me.

Kids want their stuff straight away. As soon as it goes in the bag, they are crying about where thier new shirt is, and if not then, it's as soon as you've put it in the boot and you are clicking their hysterical arse into thier car seat. Inevitably things are sweet, as soon as you walk through the door they race off to their respective bedrooms for a fashion parade of all the pretty items. I look for the nearest wine glass.

Going off your seething dragon lady nut in a public area is not very pretty, or dignified. You wait til you are safely departing the car park with all the windows up before the dragon lets loose with a barrage of loudness that only a mother is capable of. It shuts them up, sometimes they'll laugh, or argue back. It rarely makes me feel better. 

How I feel after shopping with the kids

In twenty or thirty years at Christmas time, they will reminise and joke about how Mum used to lose her shit in the car. My brothers and sisters used to think Mum was a psycho, we have a ball reminding her of how fucking crazy she was. There was five of us, and she has recently told us we were a mob of arseholes. We think it's funny as fuck, we also love her more than any other person in the world.

Fuck the self service area, unless of course you're on your own and don't feel like human interraction today. Then it is perfectly acceptable.

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