I’m so glad that Britain’s anti-smacking laws haven’t yet reached France. As I understand it, this means that I’m still at liberty here to take a quick swipe at one of those self-appointed experts in child management who are everywhere in French hypermarkets dishing out their unsolicited advice. I’ve developed a very effective detection device and can spot them an aisle-off — they invariably have that disapproving flared-nostril look. I’m actually amazed that, as the proud owner of a flamboyant and opinionated two-and-a-half-year-old, I have so far managed to resist administering GBH to the sort of person who tutts about ‘the things children get away with nowadays.’ Admittedly the little angel is standing on the conveyor belt emptying a litre of bleach on to the shopping, but there’s still nothing quite as irritating as having the patently obvious pointed out.
Shopping with little boys is not a walk in the park. Granted, it’s not always easy with big boys either, but would you honestly trade a full-blown, trolley-stopping hissy fit in the washing powder alley for a few snide comments of the ‘do-we-really-need-that’ kind ?
For a while (albeit a very little while), I adopted the ‘Patient and Developmentally-Aware’ approach. This entails letting your little one push around a mini-trolley ‘just like mummy’ (except that, unless really pushed to the limit, mummy doesn’t actually aim at other shoppers’ Achilles tendons). If you’re very tolerant, you might even let him fill his trolley with goodies – then rush around putting them back just before checking out. Yes, I did all of this. Until one day when our mini-trolley was confiscated by Uniformed Officials as it buckled under the weight of a 21-inch screen colour TV with built-it DVD. Actually, they’ve confiscated the mini-trolleys altogether now in that store -— I can’t think why…
I now fall into the athletic grab-and–run category. We hit the hypermarket running and keep running as fast as possible while simultaneously throwing articles into the trolley. The aim is to go fast enough that the child can’t manage to actually climb out (i.e. just above the speed where centrifugal force becomes a restraining factor) but not so fast that all the articles you run past become a total blur and therefore unidentifiable. It is also better to try to avoid knocking people over, but this obviously isn’t always possible (and sometimes just too irresistible). Of course, an added advantage is that, given the sheer size of hypermarkets here, you can get a reasonable heart-rate-increasing, sweat-producing workout into the bargain.
I’ve done the calculations: you end up with about 40% of the things you needed, which isn’t that bad really. Admittedly, you do also have quite a few things you didn’t need (either the result of little arms reaching out to ‘help’ or speed-induced blurring – see above). But eight times out of 10 (and especially if you stuff your handbag down your jumper and puff your way through the pregnant ladies’ checkout) you can get out without a Meltdown Situation. Of course, there is the disadvantage that you’re going so fast you miss out on all that valuable child-rearing advice. But I think I can live with that…
