Mistakes

We all have made embarrassing mistakes in our lives at some point.

Whether it's walking along joyfully talking to the person that is on an outing with you, only to turn around and realize that your companion is no longer there, or worse, it's someone other than your companion that is next to you. Or perhaps it's speed dialing who you think is your husband, only to realize that you speed dialed someone else in a different time zone, to wish them a very early good morning and cannot think of anything else to say other than you called the wrong number...and go back to bed. Oops.

The other night after what could have been our last trip to the Give-us-all-your-money-baptist church on Saturday night, we took a jaunt to the Whole Foods across the street. My daughter loves Whole Foods mainly because it is littered with sample upon sample of pita chips and hummus, flax seed goodies, and cheese spread samples. She was particularly energetic on this night and I was having a hard time keeping up with her, "Look mommy! Another sample!" as she rushed away to try something new.

As I rounded the corner of one of the isles, I saw her halfway down the isle bending over in front of a strangers cart to, what looked like, pull something off of the bottom shelf. She normally has a fairly large stranger bubble that keeps her safe and is very aware of "Stranger Danger" and so seeing her this close to the strangers basket made me curious. Perhaps she was just breaking out of her bubble tonight. As I got closer I saw that she was not in fact pulling something off of the shelf in front of the strangers basket, but rather it appeared that she was trying to crawl into the lower section of the basket. The poor older Asian man, not knowing what to think, kept pulling the basket back as she kept pursuing trying to either climb in the basket, or get something out of the basket. It was hard to tell which was going on.

After just a few seconds of taking in this whole scene I suddenly realized that she thought that this stranger was daddy. Daddy stood just a few steps in front of the strangers basket, with our basket, looking just as bewildered as I did as to what our child was doing.

I quickly rushed up to her and said, "What are you doing?" She then looked up to the owner of the basket that she had been so vigorously pursuing and realized that it wasn't daddy. I apologized profusely and the man, obviously caught off guard, apologized back to me. Upon realizing her mistake, Spanky immediately buried her red and tearing face into the side of my leg as we rounded the corner out of sight of the stranger and she burst into tears. I started shaking with an uncontrollable gut of laughter and soon BoySmile and I completely lost it partway down the next isle.

She thought that daddy was playing a game with her by trying to pull the cart away from her as she reached in. That is why she kept pursuing it so vigorously. She said she was only try to pull some garbage out of the basket to throw it away for us, but didn't realize that it wasn't even our basket. Poor kid. We laughed all the way home and every time we laughed, she cried even harder.

We ended the evening with sharing embarrassing stories of our own childhoods and telling her that someday....in a few years, she would look back on this and have a good laugh. Her response of course was, "Probably not." Poor kid. We probably aren't the most subtle parents, but I honestly couldn't keep myself from laughing so hard. I will never forget the look on her face or the confusion on everyone elses face.