Bingemom’s……

The girls played me on two falsehoods today. The first was that it was going to rain all day and the second was that they might die unhappy and unfulfilled if we did not drive immediately to Bingemans Funworx. Both solid arguments, I decided to play along.

Upon arrival, I noticed the parking lot was busier than I had ever seen it and perhaps even double if not triple the size it had been in the winter months. I also noticed there wasn’t a rain cloud in the sky and we were the only family without swimwear. A big slap on the wrist for Mommy, I paraded the three little ones to the door at least 1 km away from our newly created, probably illegal parking spot.

They were fitted with green bracelets and quickly noticed all other Funworx attendees were sporting orange ones, indicating they were all swimming and we were imprisoned in the indoor climbing equipment zone. If we so much as glanced at the over-flowing bucket of water in the splash-park we would be escorted out of the building and slapped with a one year ban.

The girls climbed, swung, fell, slid, came over to collect princess Band-aids for various made-up wounds that seemed to have reached a critical state, reflected in their whining, but remained invisible to the naked eye.

All of my planning, snacks, diapers, wipes, toys for the baby, socks for all couldn’t have prepared me for what I should have remembered from the years I took the older girls to public play centres when they were the baby’s age.

People with babies let them poke other babies in the eye and slobber all over them, yuck.

Our first encounter was with baby Aidan whose mother sat giggling as she watched Aidan house Chloe’s right cheek in his clenched fist and twist. Yanking her away would only make it more painful, I tried to take Aidan by the hand to loosen his grip. This is the part that irks me. The mother senses my concern, my baby is crying at the hands of her son and she calmly repeats the words, “Gentle, gentle, gentle, gentle Aidan, be gentle,” while my bulbous eyes pop out of the sockets in an effort to swat him away.

Aidan senses he’s doing something that has gained him the attention of the baby and two mothers so he lunges forward with his pinchers and appears to have Chloe’s retina trapped between his cheerio finders.

“Gentle, gentle, gentle,” I hear again. Waiting for Chloe’s eye to start gushing blood I want to leave the building but I remember I have two other wounded children running around and I would likely never find our mini-van beyond the water-slide anyway.

Our next beating came from a toddler with a soother in his mouth who wastes no time walking up to Chloe and shoving her down. Luckily, she was in a sitting position and really didn’t have far to topple before hitting the padded floor. There was no “gentle” from any parent, in fact, there wasn’t a parent in sight. He may have driven to Bingemans without a chaperone, although, I’m not sure if he could have found a parking spot.

Our third and final beating was from baby Zack. This time, both parents watched as Zack crawled over to my baby, leaving a trail of drool on the spongy alphabet blocks behind him, parked himself on her face invading every personal space rule in existence. The parents giggled and snuggled into each other waiting to see what he would do next.

I knew what he was going to do next. I’ve seen what was going to happen next. I could see it in slow motion. I remember without exception this happening to Hanna almost every time I set her down at a playgroup. Zack was going to kiss Chloe and there was nothing I could do to stop him.

He leaned in, the parents willing him on with their excited smiles. First he drooled on her socks, her pant-leg followed by her onesie before sticking his eleven month old tongue into my baby’s mouth enveloping both lips and a nostril.

“Okay, Romeo, reel it in!”

Off I went at the request of the girls to the first of many bathroom visits.

Is it a coincidence that all of car-seat baby’s attackers were male?

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