One Lesson At A Time

If you park in the side parking lot of my gym, you will see a way that you can cut across and save, oh- I don't know, 30 whole seconds. You can just shave off one entire corner, and cut through the grass.

So many people have done it, it has caused the grass to turn brown and die. In one straight line. It looks terrible, so the gym administrators erected a small fence to prevent people from walking in the grass.

Maddie wants to cut through, every single time we go by it. I never let her, even though people still do it. All. The. Time. I'm getting tired of explaining why they can do it, but she can't.

On Friday, we were casually strolling on the sidewalk. A lady brushed past us, and almost knocked Maddie down. She was talking on her phone, and obviously, didn't have time to glance down to see the 3 1/2 foot person in front of her.

She decided to ignore the fence and take the shortcut- like I said, it does save a whole 30 seconds. It had been raining. You know where this is going, don't you?

Her 4 inch heels got stuck, and she twisted her ankle. She let out a squawk, and went flying. Landed right in a big mud puddle. Her once beautiful, green suede, knee-length coat was now brown. Mud brown, I would call it. Her Louis Vuitton bag was emptied into the puddle. Her perfectly styled hair, now had streaks of mud decorating it. Her dignity was spread all around her.

I stopped and asked her if I could help. She actually started screaming at me. "NOOO! THIS IS DISGUSTING! NO. DON'T. TOUCH. ME. WHY ME?!?!" Um, look, you crazy woman, this is not my fault. Stop yelling at me. I might have wanted to push you down, but I didn't. And, I haven't passed the course in moving objects with my mind, yet. . .

I didn't think it would help matters by telling her that it happened because she was in too big of a hurry and tried to walk through mud in 4 inch heels. I offered one last time to help. She got up and shook the mud off of her phone. Opened it up and strode away. Yelling into the phone, the whole time. Nice lady.

"Mommy- That was disgusting."

"Yep. That's what happens when you walk through the grass."

And, the light in her little head went off.

"You aren't supposed to break the rules. Right, Mommy?"

"That's right. Never break the rules. Bad things happen when you do. Remember that."

I'm going to keep brainwashing my sweet little girl, for as long as I possibly can. At least until she figures me out.

Hopefully, it'll be when she has kids of her own.