I used to be more concerned about offending parents. Now I’ve just seen enough kids with busted heads not to care if their parents get angry because I asked them to sit down in a cart.

I’ve gotten bold about rudeness in public with children too. If I ask a child to stop making a loud slurping sound and they keep it up long enough, I’ll reach over and grab the straw. I only do that if they’re sitting at my table and the parents are remiss though. After that you pretty much never eat together again. DD has lost friends over it – rude, trash-mannered friends.

It must be all those years I spent stuck on the bratty-child flight next to professionally dressed parents who didn’t care at all that their child was kicking the seat or making fake bodily sounds for 1000 miles. Maybe I’ll eventually be the crazy old lady with cats.

I’m not offended when my child races down a library aisle – which she should definitely not do – and somebody says slow down please or other polite reminder. But getting in somebody’s face like that was really ugly and inappropriate.

I asked a girl to sit down in her buggy at Home Depot once and her dad got really angry with me. I said, “Sorry, I was afraid your child might bust her head open on this concrete floor.” Poor kid has an idiot for a father. I didn’t care how mad he was. Nobody was going to the ER on my watch.