May you never have to eat your words
Especially such unpleasant ones as I’ve seen bandied about in judgment of this duck business.
A few of us have had a lot of fun poking fun at the situation - even when people didn’t quite understand that we were being cynical and commented in all seriousness or clicked away in bewilderment - but many more have climbed up on high horses taller than the famous Ancient Greek one.
Some of the more outlandish comments that have been made (all comments reprinted with lack of capitalization and poor grammar intact):
“the sleeping child excuse is dumb, because she could have returned to the store another day. if you’re gonna be a thief, admit you’re a thief. don’t make weak excuses for your behavior.”
Sleeping child excuse? You aren’t a parent, are you?
“When did it become ok for any child to take and put anything in a cart? A parent has a responsibility to watch their child while they are shopping and make sure that things are just taken and dropped into the cart in the first place.”
Want to talk about attention to detail? Read the post before making irrelevant criticisms.
“The duck may have fallen unnoticed by your 3-year-old into the stroller basket, but did she overhear the giggling, laughing and making light over your free things?”
Because mothers ALWAYS giggle like madwomen when they’re out shopping with a toddler and a newborn. They’re hoping someone will give them a free ride to the mental hospital where they can finally get some sleep.
“It isn’t yours, and if you keep it without paying for it, you’re a thief. I think that’s a very big deal indeed. Be thankful the store didn’t catch you and call the cops.”
Call the cops on a stroller-toting baby-wearing mother of two? Over a $6.95 duck? Melodramatic much?
“I think that all you’ve proven is that 95% of your readers are dishonest. This is why people are judged by the company they keep.”
Considering how many times you returned to comment, you might also be classified as a reader. Perhaps you ought to be more careful about the company YOU’RE keeping.
And then we’ve got two commenters who are obviously next in line to be canonized:
“I would probably pray for forgiveness, donate the ducky to charity, and do some other sort of self-imposed penance to make me feel less guilty. But I would still feel guilty.”
Trying to work yourself out of purgatory, eh?
“Actually, I never speed, I’ve never gotten a traffic ticket, I ALWAYS stop at stop signs, I yield when the sign tells me to, and if I forget to turn on my signals, I go straight and turn at the NEXT block.”
Well, la-di-da for you. I hope I never get stuck behind you on the freeway. You’d get eaten alive in New Jersey.
But here’s where it starts to get back to the issue at hand:
“Integrity is something that can be really hard to hold onto. Once it starts slipping, it’s really hard to get back and really hard for it to stop slipping.”
I get it. I do, really. But leveling this sort of judgment - this holier-than-thou attitude - on a situation that was admittedly an accident is a bit of a slippery slope as well.
I’ve been there too, having railed against those who didn’t bother to RSVP to my daughter’s birthday party, only to discover an unopened invitation to another little girl’s birthday party stuffed deep in the pocket of my raincoat - a party that had taken place a month before I found the invitation.
I didn’t purposely ignore that invitation. I didn’t even benignly neglect it. I literally forgot all about it in the midst of everything else that must have been happening at the time. After I discovered it, I realized that the non-RSVPers I railed against almost certainly weren’t being obtuse or even careless. Just like me, they were overwhelmed and forgetful. If I was going to judge them, I might as well judge myself too.
A lot of unexpected events occur in life. Not only do others do things we’d never expect them to do, sometimes we ourselves do things we’d never expect to do - against our better judgment, against everything we stand for. It happens.
I love that there are people who expect that they would gladly return the duck right away. But I’d much rather be friends with the ones who were able to say that without being unkind, irrational, or rude.
(Additional duck buttons - picturing the embellished ducks from yesterday’s post - available upon request.)
June 7th, 2007 at 5:31 am
Wow. I can’t believe people wrote those things.
I’ve accidentally stolen several things since becoming a parent. I’m not a thief, I just have weak powers of observation.
One time Ian stole a block of tofu from the grocery store. I had no idea he was even holding it.
We don’t even eat tofu.
June 7th, 2007 at 5:52 am
My kids sneak stuff into my basket frequently and how they do this out of my notice is one of life’s big mysteries, along with where those socks vanish.
I agree with you: I’m not anywhere near perfect, make mistakes and goof on a daily basis, and offer as much latitude as I can to other people (of course, not perfect there either…some things are peeves, I admit).
I can’t believe people got that…well, holier-than-thou.
June 7th, 2007 at 6:38 am
I’m so sure you NEVER speed!
Ha. I think that what’s so great is that in their “perfection” they’re losing the point of showing our kids that we’re not perfect.
Sometimes things accidentally fall in our strollers. And if you don’t take it back, the world will be okay. It is clearly NOT the downfall of a person or a nation. I could talk about way worse things that are wrong with parenting today. They have NOTHING to do with stolen ducks. Why not get pissed about padded bras for our 6 year old daughters? Or the objectification of women in music videos?
What bothers me is a world where not taking it back is a SIN. Seriously, there are way worse things — and really, that person worries me.
June 7th, 2007 at 7:14 am
Word.
I once found a bottle of generic Centrum Silver in my diaper bag after an excursion at Target. I gave them to my grammy and never gave it a second thought.
This is just another one of those issues that makes some people feel better about themselves because of their ‘values’. I say, if you need to look down on others to elevate your own sense of self-worth, your ‘values’ are a bunch of crap.
June 7th, 2007 at 7:24 am
oh. mah. gahd.
this is teh AWESOME.
Seriously, look at the incredible power you have over these people. Write about a stuffed duck falling in your cart and look at the results.
I say next time Kristen should write about going up to the cash register to pay for the damn thing, and when she reaches in her purse for her wallet a big baggie full of weed falls out.
Then watch the hilarious apoplexy ensue.
June 7th, 2007 at 7:41 am
Who knew a duck would be the downfall of Western Civilization as we knew it?
June 7th, 2007 at 8:12 am
And may you never have to eat your damn duck.
Amen.
June 7th, 2007 at 8:25 am
SO FUNNY. I thought this was the one place where we could be totally honest, and not have to put on our ’smiling mom’ face….
What’s the old adage? You put someone else down to make yourself feel better?
I would have kept the duck too. And I have a sneaking suspicion that so would most of those women who commented otherwise!
June 7th, 2007 at 8:36 am
I think someone should start a site with pictures of all the stuff our kids have inadvertently stolen. LIke “stuff on my cat” but “stuff my kid took out of a store without my knowledge.” Tofu, a duck, what else ya got?
June 7th, 2007 at 8:41 am
These comments are unbelievable!
June 7th, 2007 at 10:22 am
You said it.
June 7th, 2007 at 11:34 am
Ha. Mayberry. I’m crushing hard on you today. You’re just spot on all around.
Seriously, that IS a great post.
We need a name for it.
Kleptomamas.com
http://www.mykidstealsshit.com
Anyone else?
June 7th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Umm. Yeah. I read this post yesterday. On my way home from work, I stopped at the local Acme to pick up milk, bread & some cheese. As I was packing Will back into the car, I saw that he had a refrigerator thermometer in his hand. I now know that it is a chilly 37 degrees in my fridge.
Although, when doing a “big grocery-shop” Maggie always eats a banana while we shop.
I take a banana from the bunch and asks the cashier to scan it twice.
June 7th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
I can’t believe how harsh those comments were! Being judgemental of others (especially when the situtation CLEARLY doesn’t warrant it) is one of my pet peeves.
Kristen didn’t do anything wrong and she certainly doesn’t need to say any Hail Marys!
June 7th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
good lord. it’s a *duck*, people! not the sentry for the gates of hell…
June 7th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
i try to steal a duck a day, just to keep myself fresh and nimble. “pick-a-duck lara,” that’s what they call me.
June 7th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
Well, as my dear mother is fond of saying, “Fuck a duck!”
I’ve been remiss in visiting your site over the last few days and I came back to quite a firestorm! I haven’t laughed so hard all week.
June 7th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
DITTO! Glad you came over to read my opinion on the duck fiasco! I’ll take some pictures of the stolen landscaping rocks from Wal-Mart this weekend. My husband is incorporating them in a new backyard project.
Some of the people up on that high horse must be on crack!
June 7th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
It feels weird to be on the opposite side of this. I think the duck needs to go back. Not make a special trip or an object lesson or feel guilt or burden…just take it back. Because it isn’t yours until you have paid for it, simple as that. I try to keep my ethics simple. If something bothers my conscience, I try to take a hard look at it because it is probably pointing me toward something important.
June 8th, 2007 at 6:34 am
It wasn’t even a live duck!
A live duck, I’d even have kept that if it meant getting everyone back in the car and off to the store for round two. Screw that!
(Note to self: To get more traffic, steal a duck.)
June 8th, 2007 at 8:58 am
great, you’ve just caused me to waste ANOTHER 20 minutes at work. because, see, i started to read the post, and i had no friggin clue what the duck you were talking about, so i had to click on some links, and then i got it, and then i had to re-read your post, and now i’m not only behind, i’m so ducking fisgusted with people in general (and holier than thou saint wannabes in particular) that i could vomit. which i think i will. so you better duck.
June 8th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
The turn signal thing kills me.
No reason to be a martyr every second of every day, is there. If it’s safe to turn, MAKE THE DAMN TURN.
June 12th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
“I’ve been there too, having railed against those who didn’t bother to RSVP to my daughter’s birthday party, only to discover an unopened invitation to another little girl’s birthday party stuffed deep in the pocket of my raincoat - a party that had taken place a month before I found the invitation.”
This statement demonstrates pretty clearly that you have no idea where your readers are coming from. You, in the example you cite above, made judgments about the motivations of other people without adequate information. (No assumptions here–that’s clear from your subsequent paragraph.)
The commenters here aren’t making assumptions about how the duck got in the stroller or whether or not the woman stole the duck on purpose–they’re reacting to the conscious decision not to remedy the mistake once it was discovered.
I’ve been just as surprised by the commentary as you claim above to be, but in an entirely different way. In my world, if you walk out of a store with something that doesn’t belong to you, you return it or you pay for it. There is no question to be answered. It’s not “holier than thou” to naively expect other people to do the right thing–it’s just the opposite. It’s an assumption about basic human character that, sadly, seems to have been disproven by the reaction to this story.
It’s not murder, it’s not worth the attention it’s gotten, but it’s not a big philosophical question, either. When you take stuff home from a store, you pay for it.
June 27th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Once I got a bunch of groceries for free because they were underneath the carrier thing on the shopping cart. I discovered it when I got to the car but I didn’t go back inside–I had a newborn and a two-year-old to get home and we were all a tad cranky. I just kept a note of what I had accidentally shoplifted and when we went back to the store the following week, I explained what had happened and paid for it then. (I will say that the clerk looked at me like I was completely out of my mind.) I try to make amends when stuff like that happens just because I hate having stuff like that on my mind. And every time I would have gone back to the store, I would have remembered that I had accidentally stolen something. I’d rather stay in the land of being unable to remember ANYTHING, rather than to constantly be reminded of my failure to live up to the image my kids have of me as, you know, Mother Teresa. (Other than the Santa thing, I’m saving the lying to my kids for when they ask me if I’ve ever tried pot.)
I don’t think it’s that big of a deal but the fact that it was on your mind enough for you to write about it might indicate that you’re not quite comfortable with your choice. Then again, maybe you just thought it was funny. At any rate, most of us have BTDT and MOST of us can be trusted not rat you out. –Barb
June 28th, 2007 at 10:38 am
You know, I had YOU confused with Kristin. Sorry about that –it’s so, so, SO summer vacation here. I’m not sure I’m going to survive.
Thank you for your nice note in answer to my blog response to the Duck Frenzy. I don’t think it’s so unusual for moms to disagree politely but you are exactly right, people have responded with extremism, which is like inviting the Cosmos to whup you right upside your head (Texas phrase). And not to be too “Can’t we all just get along?” but can’t we? I never understand why we women (and I’m saying we because I don’t want a big ole can of whupass upside my head (another Texas phrase)) take it so personally when people make different choices than we do. Also, with the exception of, say, felonies including rape and murder, I’ve never met a person who could be condemned because of a single act. It’s been my experience that people are a leetle more complex than that.
I’m done with the duck now. But thanks again for being so civil and well-written. I think we’re probably more on the same page than we realize.
Barb