There have been very few times in my life when I felt the urge to go off on someone. I'm fairly calm and can keep my cool. Depending on who you ask this may not be true, but I know I keep my temper in check a lot better than my husband. However I almost went full crazy bitch off-her-meds redneck on a stranger yesterday.
We decided to take the kids downtown to see the Titanic exhibit. Surprisingly they both were really excited about this (even after I explained it was artifacts from the actual ship, not the movie) so off we went. It was much more crowded than I expected it to be and there was a slow moving line to make your way through to see everything. Joshua doesn't always do well in crowds so I kept a close eye on him. There was an older man in line in front of us, not elderly, but what I call "old enough to know better". The first indication that Joshua might have trouble there was when you enter they give you a card with the name of an actual passenger. When you get to the end of the exhibit you can check a list to see if your card was one of the survivors. Joshua began to panic a little.
"Mom, what if I die?"
"It's not really you, it's just the name of someone who was really on the ship."
Death is a subject that is very touchy for Joshua so I was scared where this could go. He let that go and started with this one.
"Mom, I feel like we're sinking"
"Joshua, we're on dry land and not even on a boat."
We had a few more of these exchanges and the man in front of us would turn and give me an odd look when Joshua would start voicing his worries. I could feel my blood start to boil with the anticipation that he would be dumb enough to say something to us. When Joshua began to complain about how hot it was, the man turned to Ryan and said
"Is he the baby?"
I looked at this guy and thought to myself " Yes, asshole. He IS the baby. He's my baby. He might not be the youngest in the family but I swear to God if you say anything negative or demeaning about what you might consider to be odd behavior I will come at you with the anger of a thousand killer bees whose nest you just disturbed." He didn't deserve an explanation of why my baby does the things he does and I wasn't in the mood to give a speech about autism acceptance. All I wanted to do was punch this man in the throat.
Ryan noticed the look on my face and instantly read my mind. He stepped in between me and the jackass and said "No, actually he's our oldest" and pointed me in a different direction. I'm pretty sure he read my mind too because not once did he look our way again as we made our way through the exhibit.
I'm not an intimidating or mean person, but say something about my kids. I dare you.
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