A few weeks ago, my husband, son and I all went on a long-weekend vacation together. Something we had looked forward to for months, we anticipated a lovely weekend of napping, swimming in the lake, eating out in Wisconsin’s finest dining establishments, drinking some great beer and watching movies. Or at least some small combination of all of the above.

What we got? Was puking. Lots and lots of puking.

As our car pulled into town on the bright and shining Friday morning, our son looked at me and projectile vomited all over himself. Seriously, it was like something out of The Exorcist. We called the doctor, who said it might just be a fluke and to continue on with weekend, but to keep a close eye on him. So, we cautiously continued our fantasies about a weekend filled with watersports and beer.

And, he was fine until we went to dinner Saturday night, when he leaned over the table and vomited directly into my purse as I ate my cod dinner. This was five minutes after he knocked my glass of red wine onto the floor. Oh, and fifteen minutes after an old man tripped over my son’s diaper bag. Needless to say, we were “those people” at the restaurant.

We cut our losses and left early. As for our son, he was fine the moment we pulled into the driveway. As for us? Still scarred and bruised.

They say your life changes when you have a baby. And it does. But I hadn’t “gotten” quite how much until that weekend. Sure, we never sleep in anymore, we don’t eat at nice restaurants and my paycheck is signed directly over to the nanny, but, when life beckons, we’ve always been able to scoop our son up and take him along without too much protest.

I sense this is a valuable lesson for the future i.e. when he learns to start talking. Especially when he learns the words: “No” and “I hate that place” and “Why do we always have to go to Target?”

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Over the winter break I took my kids to an inflatable wonderland to party like it was 2007, because I’m cool like that. It’s a place where rumbustious children are free to jump, climb and slide down air-filled vinyl dream castles. Lucky for us, this playground which is normally reserved for overindulged children’s birthday parties had an “open gym” over the winter break.

“Brilliant!”, I thought, “If the children are able to run, jump and climb long enough, I just may buy myself enough rest time to write a blog post.”

Then, as quickly as the snow melted off my boots, the reality of communal play-time reared it’s ugly head. You would think a woman my age would have come to terms long ago with other people’s selfishness and ass-holeyness as was so glaringly obvious from all the ill-behaved and sick kids surrounding us like an ambush. If a child wasn’t coughing up green mucous and hacking up spraying wet shit in every direction, they were covered with some equally disturbing skin disease, whether contagious or not, was simply nasty.

So, of course, my kids got sick. Although I realize I cannot keep them stuck inside and quarantined, one does expect to go to a densely populated public facility without being purposely exposed to whooping cough, malaria, bird flu and other highly communicable diseases. My little guy had a cold worthy of medical journal reporting. It was a cold that kept giving and giving and took about 3 1/2 weeks for his nose to stop dripping onto our hardwood floors. The coughing kept him up at night which meant he was a dream to be around the next day; a combination of sick and crabby. Where do I sign up?!?

The thing that bothers me the most though, is these parents didn’t give a flying fuck. They only made a disingenuous effort to ask their darlings to cover their mouths when I shot them the evil eye and then their half-hearted effort was so insulting — the kid knew that the parents didn’t give a shit and in return, either did they. They were all like, “It’s all about me, me and me and if you get sick, tough titties bitch.” (I’m positive the 4 year old she-devil with tuberculosis was thinking exactly that.)

Moms allowed their children to cut in line on top of infecting other kids, while they talked amongst themselves about party favors and Gymbore bucks.

The morals of this story — people suck and asshole parents have asshole kids. The main message really should be, and I hope to God one of you asshole parents that takes their sick kid’s ass to play-centers is reading this, keep your sickly snots at home and spank them — often!

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