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inspired by a kid having an epic tantrum at Target
I had my last PT session this evening, and popped over to Target on an errand afterward, where a real prizewinner of a tantrum was going on. This was a kid who was screaming and sobbing - so harshly that I saw more than one adult besides myself look around to see what on earth was happening. What was happening was that she was angry at her father, apparently; it was a girl of about two or three in an umbrella stroller and maybe it was past her bedtime? but her dad was pushing the stroller and speaking quietly to her and not yelling at her or yanking her around or any of the things you often see parents doing in public that always seem to me to be abetting their kids' difficult public behavior. He wasn't taking her out of the store, was the only thing, but it sure seemed to me to be a case of a kid who was screaming the walls down even though everything was actually objectively okay. But I was glad so many of us seemed to be so concerned.
This was just the latest instance in which I spent time thinking about responses to difficult situations. See above re: yelling at people over my dad's referrals, to take one example; see above re: State College, PA for another.
The other day, when I got home and checked my mail I saw that the neighbor's door next to the mailboxes was standing open a couple of inches. I froze for a moment. If the keys had been in the lock I'd have assumed their hands were full when they came in and they'd forgotten about it, but there were no keys. The latch didn't seem to be damaged. I gave a listen. I couldn't hear anything. This made me think it was less likely something nasty was happening at exactly that moment, which almost had me shrugging and heading up to my own apartment. But what if something did happen, I thought, and my ignoring the open door turns out to have been exactly the wrong decision (on the order of calmly waiting for a referral that was never entered, I mean to say, or of telling my boss I'd seen something awful but not telling anyone else, never mind stopping it in the first place). I made sure my keys were in my hand and carefully knocked on the open door.
And the downstairs neighbor came out from the kitchen and everything was fine and I told him I'd just seen the door open and wanted to be sure everyone was okay, and he thanked me and closed the door.
But do you know, if I'd walked on by, I genuinely don't know how well I'd have slept that night. Likewise this evening if I'd heard the kid screaming but not seen that she was just having a meltdown of her own, I think I'd still be worried. The question I'm thinking of more and more when potentially bad shit may be going down is, What will I wish I had done?
This was just the latest instance in which I spent time thinking about responses to difficult situations. See above re: yelling at people over my dad's referrals, to take one example; see above re: State College, PA for another.
The other day, when I got home and checked my mail I saw that the neighbor's door next to the mailboxes was standing open a couple of inches. I froze for a moment. If the keys had been in the lock I'd have assumed their hands were full when they came in and they'd forgotten about it, but there were no keys. The latch didn't seem to be damaged. I gave a listen. I couldn't hear anything. This made me think it was less likely something nasty was happening at exactly that moment, which almost had me shrugging and heading up to my own apartment. But what if something did happen, I thought, and my ignoring the open door turns out to have been exactly the wrong decision (on the order of calmly waiting for a referral that was never entered, I mean to say, or of telling my boss I'd seen something awful but not telling anyone else, never mind stopping it in the first place). I made sure my keys were in my hand and carefully knocked on the open door.
And the downstairs neighbor came out from the kitchen and everything was fine and I told him I'd just seen the door open and wanted to be sure everyone was okay, and he thanked me and closed the door.
But do you know, if I'd walked on by, I genuinely don't know how well I'd have slept that night. Likewise this evening if I'd heard the kid screaming but not seen that she was just having a meltdown of her own, I think I'd still be worried. The question I'm thinking of more and more when potentially bad shit may be going down is, What will I wish I had done?
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And I too have been thinking lately about how I react to things...I've found for me, I'm pretty good about standing up for other people. Harder, somehow, to stand up for myself, sometimes.