An open letter to the nice family at Sam's on Sunday

Dear Family,

What a nice family you seem to be. Mom, Dad, little fivish or so girl in her sassy denim jeans. Hanging out together, strolling through Sam's on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Holding hands by the muffins in the bakery.

Oh man, little one, you look pretty puny, a little green around the gills perhaps. Oh no! Don't do it! Suck it up, sis. You can make it through Sam's without barfing. Or, maybe not.....

Good job, Mom and Dad, for promptly comforting your little spewing offspring in her moment of need. It sucks to be little and sick, and when you're the grown up, the only excuse in the world for leaving your kid's barf on the floor is so you can whisk her away, home to the bathtub, fresh jammies and her teddy bear, where with a little time and a little Pedialyte, she'll be good as new.

It was nice that you scooped her away from the scene she'd just made, to suffer her wet jeans and humiliation in the privacy of your Lexus SUV, hopefully with leather seats. Too bad, though, for the poor bakery chick who was left to deal with the devastation your little geyser just left.

I have my own little girl, so I wondered several times during the next 30 minutes I spent in the store about how your daughter was faring. Did you get her home, I wondered, before Round 2? Or God forbid, before Number 2? Because if what came out one end was an indication of what was coming out the other, poor you! And poor, poor Lexus.

Imagine my surprise then, when I finished my shopping and headed to the front of the store. Lo and behold, there you all are. Drippy wet, in the cart before me, sat your little angel. In her soaking wet jeans, smelling to high heaven. I said "smelling" folks, not "smiling."

Seriously?

You're too busy to stick around and clean up the mess your kid left on the floor, but you still have time to finish up your shopping? Are you kidding me? Not only have you befouled the bakery, but now you've polluted the air in the rest of the store with God only knows what kind of rotavirus, norovirus, astrovirus PLAGUE.

Nice, though, that you had time to pick up the giant bag of potatoes and some extra Tide. Smells like you're gonna need it.

Thanks a helluva lot for that, folks. We need more self-centered jackasses in the world, and we certainly need more kids with tummy bugs. It's not enough that your kid is sick, so now you have to drive her, dripping down the aisles of the local warehouse store, spreading her nasty stomach virus to all the shoppers?

It's a good thing I have turned into such a germ-a-phobe, because I was barely arms length away from spraying all of you from head to toe with the giant can of Lysol I picked up on aisle 33.

Shame on you for your lousy treatment of your own kid, the poor bakery chick, and all the innocent shoppers you might have infected. Next time, why don't you go to Costco instead? My membership has expired there.

Best regards,
MrsG