Friday at the Mall

Something happened Friday at the mall that is a possible contender for most embarrassing moment. Well, I should clarify before my brother chimes in again with a comment about how he can reveal a far more embarrassing moment from my childhood than I would ever post on here.

Now that I'm a parent there's a new category of embarrassing moments that consists of being embarrassed by your children. My parents have this great story about going over to a friend's house for dinner. In the car my dad (who is a big eater) complained that he felt like he never got enough to eat at their house and always went home hungry. When they walked in the door my brother promptly informed the hosts that my dad didn't like to come to their house for dinner because he never got enough to eat. Mortifying.

I've had a few of these moments like Jackson playing with brown play-dough during church and yelling "It looks like poop!", screaming "Don't spank me!" all the way through a crowded restaurant, not wearing underwear on the first day of school, etc. But what happened Friday at the mall left me speechless.

We ran into a friend of Jackson's from preschool (Nema) and his mom (Nusha). They were there with another lady we didn't know and her daughter, and they didn't speak any English. I didn't really know any of them at all, but the boys were happy to see each other so we decided to hang around with them for awhile. After we rode the train, I got the kids a smoothie and we went over to that game by the movie theater where the projector shines an image onto the floor and the kids jump around on it. It was pretty crowded and there were lots of kids and people all around.

So while Jackson was jumping around with his smoothie he dropped it, and the cup broke a little and the smoothie splattered on the floor. I grabbed the cup because it was full and quickly took it back to the smoothie store to get another cup, and Nema's mom followed me to get some paper towels. We came back and cleaned up the mess, no big deal. Nema's mom was talking to her friend in the other language for awhile and they had strained looks on their faces and kept glancing over at me. Finally Nusha came over and informed me that her friend said that when we walked away, Jackson got down on all fours and tried to lick all the smoothie up off the floor. That's right, he licked the floor...OF THE MALL! She said she tried to stop him, but he was very determined.

He must have thought I took the cup to throw the smoothie away, and I guess his 3 and a half year old brain panicked and thought he might never again get anything so good. So he licked it up...off the floor...of the mall. I didn't even know what to say I was so embarrassed. Here these nice people are hanging around with us for the first time, and my kid (who up until this moment I thought was pretty smart) starts acting like a dog at the mall.

I'm sure there will be more embarrassing moments to come, but right now this one is up there close to the top of the list.