Meltdown at Bulk Barn

I’d never been to Bulk Barn before, so I didn’t know it was a candy-lover’s paradise. I bought all my favourite candies and some pot barley. I chided myself later for buying $9.91 worth of candy, but then I reminded myself it wasn’t ALL candy, there was also the pot barley. So what if the pot barley only cost 17 cents? And there were fortune cookies too. I don’t what possessed me. Maybe it’s because it’s the Chinese New Year and this is the Year of the Pig. And speaking of pigs, check out the Pigs Ears. Yummy.

Some people were actually in Bulk Barn with small children. I was dumbfounded. Why would you take a small child into a place like that? God, what were they thinking? There was one little boy about three or four who was having a meltdown. His voice was shaking with desperation as he repeatedly demanded irresistible things and was repeatedly denied them.

“I WANT THAT!” he cried, pointing to a bin of sugar pops.

“No,” said his mother absent-mindedly as she contemplated the bin of salted peanuts.

“I WANT THAT!” he cried desperately, pointing to a bin of Smarties.

“No,” she said.

This went on for awhile, until the poor child was shaking from the frustration of being so close to something he craved, yet so far away from having it. He needed a fix and he needed it bad.

“PLEASE!” he shrieked, “PLEASE!”

The magic word. The word that unlocks the universe for small children. The word that makes adults soften and relent. Unfortunately, it only works until you’ve mastered it, and then it loses its power. This little boy hadn’t completely mastered it, I could tell by the inflection in his voice. It wasn’t a pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top, it was a please-or-I’ll-spit-in-your-face.

See the difference?

“PLEASE!!!!!!”

“Keep your voice down,” his mother admonished him, “You can’t have it. Candy’s bad for you.”

Jesus lady, why did you bring him into a candy department store then? If you weren’t going to let him have any candy, you should have left him tied up outside. Christ. I’m in my 40s and I’d freak out too if I was in here and couldn’t have the licorice cigars and chocolate covered espresso beans. I’m already trembling because I have to wait till I pay for them before I can cram them into my mouth.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying people should give kids everything they want. Believe me, I didn’t overindulge my kid. He looked pretty damned cute as a baby gnawing on a licorice twizzler, so I gave him the odd one of those. But he learned early on that he wouldn’t always get a treat when we went to the corner store. He knew that the candy-flanked check-out line at the grocery store was not a last-minute impulse-buying opportunity. He dealt with it. But did I take him to Candy Land and torture him? No, I did not. Teaching a kid a little self-control is one thing, but you don’t have to be sadistic about it.

Before I left, I shoved one of these into his gaping maw.

Just kidding. I stood back and watched from a safe distance as he went through a full-scale boil, eruption and meltdown. Then I paid for my loot and stepped outside for a licorice cigar.