DEAR SON: Of tantrum-prone kids in the supermarket

Dear Jijee,

It is in a supermarket where you get to see pampered kids, kids who fear spanking in the evening if they misbehave, kids of people who do business with the government and kids who have acquired exquisite tastes early in life.

For example, I once saw a girl who had forced her parents to open a yoghurt tub before they could even pay for it. I know you did not notice because you were too young and too pre-occupied with other items displayed on the supermarket shelves.

But I reckon that girl must be one of those who often get their way. I don’t know how hungry the kid was, or what had led to the opening of the tub. But for such a girl, who appeared barely two years old, to have bullied her parents into opening the pack was something I know I could not have done with my parents.

My dad could not do such things. And if he did, he could wait till you got home or away from the public then give a semi-tutorial on how he does not like people who pester him in public and who made him buy things he had not planned for.

I will also blame supermarkets for encouraging this trend by placing the most tempting of items near the cashier. Many are the times a purchase starts with, “Mum, naeza beba hii?” And with those words punctuated with the deepest poetry since the one used during the first staging of Romeo and Juliet, some Sh205 more are added to mum’s bill. Just because.

Son, do you remember that day we encountered kids who seemed like all they had come to do was pick all the pork products in the supermarket? It was during the 2017 festive season, and I bet you weren’t taking notice. I thought to myself that the two boys had had emptied their year’s savings piggybank so they could have themselves the choicest pig meat.

From the way they looked, however, you could tell that it was not during the festive season alone that they were interested in pork.

Okay, son, not that you are the best at the supermarket, either. In our last two visits to the outlet near our home, you have been a pesky boy. You cry too much, fight too rebelliously and embarrass us beyond words.

One time, you demanded to walk in the supermarket by yourself. (Funny that, at 13 months, you believe you have all it takes to tread on even those areas where fools would walk in as angels flee.) Of course no one could let you work your recalcitrant legs on the supermarket floor, lest they lead you to a shelf with an expensive item and we are forced to pay for it through our noses once you mess it up.

Then there was a time you were demanding to hold of everything that was being put into the shopping trolley; as if sitting on the trolley for a ride as shopping went on was not fun enough. Do you know how much of a privilege it is to sit snugly on a trolley as people push you around? It is a favour with an age limit. When you hit two years, you will be too old to fit into that tiny space supermarkets provide on their trollies for carrying kids.

Speaking of kids carried in trollies, I have never decoded the looks kid carried on trolleys exchange when their paths cross. I often see you staring at another kid and the body language suggests you telling the plump one on the other side, “Hey, see how my servants are so broke they can’t fill the trolley so it can have better stability? I think I need better servants.”

The other one usually looks back as if to say, “Hi, buddy. I tried to piss on some of this shopping beneath me but, damn, they had put on a diaper on me. I swear, I don’t remember seeing a diaper being fixed on me. They must have done it in my sleep, like they always do.”

I have also seen kids crying for items whose use they barely know, simply because of the colours of their package. My layman research shows that something coloured purple or red is sure to attract a child’s attention. Remember the day you were crying for a very large tin of drinking chocolate which I did not want to buy? You caused a big stink.

Yours with triple-digit shopping points,

Dad

***

This series brings you writings by Peter Mogambi, a Nairobi residentwho became a father in January 2017. By the time his son is old enough to read and comprehend, which is at least 11 years from today, a lot of water will have passed under the bridge. So, he has decided to preserve happenings in black and white so that when the boy can finally comprehend, he will get to follow his father’s feelings.