Confessions of a Bad Mother

I thought to myself on Wednesday, while attempting to enjoy my new zoo membership, why do hordes of children have to ruin an otherwise perfectly good day at the zoo?

I love children. I believe that children are the future. I just don’t like the way they act, sound, or smell.

My low tolerance for children makes me wonder what kind of a mother I was. A guilty one, mainly.

All mothers are guilty for something:

• They work too hard and aren’t home enough, or


• They are home too much and thus don’t earn enough.


• They are too smothering, or


• They aren’t protective enough.


• They aren’t involved enough in school activities, or


• They embarrass their children by turning up at school all the time.

My personal guilt trips? Besides having all of the above, often at once, they mostly revolved around my distaste for children. Luckily for my child, this did not extend to him. My child was cute and funny and brilliant. Their children were loud, unkempt, generally difficult to love, and often headache-inducing.

This (and maybe a little fear of teachers) made it difficult for me to volunteer at school or chaperone school trips, although I did make a go of helping out at Campfire meetings when my son fell in love with a Campfire Girl. Luckily, that affair did not last long.

Occasionally, I would accuse my son of acting like a child, and tell him that it was high time he grew up. Then he would remind me that, at age seven, he was well within his rights to act like a child.

But still.

Thankfully he seems to have survived with few scars. Mental scars, anyway. Physically, he’s starting to look like a road map (not really, but it sounded cool, so let me keep it).

But seriously, shouldn’t they have an adults-only day at the zoo?