Judge not lest ye be a parent

After three months of being a mother, all I can say for sure is that I’ll never cavalierly pass judgment on another mother again the way I used to. And anyone out there who hasn’t had kids, please don’t criticize either unless you can walk a mile in a new mother’s shoes, which I challenge you to find because your house is a mess and it wouldn’t matter if you could anyway because the idea of leaving the house is freaking terrifying. Last week when I pulled up to Target to get baby gas medicine (a necessity that may be more important than food for my flatulent little beauty), I saw a baby inside a brand new Volvo with nary an adult to be found in the vicinity. Three and a half months ago my spine would have stiffened with indignation and an anonymous phone call to the authorities would perhaps have been placed. But after being a mom for only a short time, I hesitated. I recalled one day that I tried to rent a West Wing dvd from my local video store (again, I strongly caution against judgment). Here is how it went. Trip one to the video store resulted in me unlatching Betty from the car seat, navigating the store and the idiot 18-year old clerk, renting the fifth disc in season one, bringing it home, unpacking the car, setting Betty up in her buzzy chair, and realizing it was the “special features” disc with absolutely no stories. Trip two to the video store entailed packing Betty back into the car, again navigating the store with her gigantic Cadillac of a baby carrier, and discovering that the store did not have the first two discs of season two. Not to be deterred, I rented the third and fourth disc, packed Betty back into the car, and drove ten minutes to Blockbuster to see if they had the first two discs. I unpacked Betty, entered the store, and found that they did not. Ok, I said, packing Betty back into the car. I’ll just go with disc three and four. But wait. Where are they? Answer: not in the car, not in my purse, nowhere to be found. Dear Lord, did I put them on the top of my car when I was packing Betty up and drive away? Trip three to the video store entailed driving back across town, unpacking Betty and her Cadillac, entering the video store and having the idiot 18-year old look at me like I was the idiot as he passed me the discs I had never taken off the counter in the first place. So my hesitation in passing judgment on the absentee Volvo parent in the parking lot was based on the thought that perhaps this was the fourth or fifth time this parent had returned to the store and they simply could not bear to unpack the baby again. Not that the parent made the correct decision, mind you, but I submit that the episode may perhaps warrant a call for more drive-through retail options than a parent inquisition.