Losing It the Genetic Way
In some ways it seems like M has a split personality. Either that or she is hitting the hormonal craziness of teenagedom early. The other day she wanted to play a video game, and I gave her the standard answer that she could play as soon as her room was clean and she had practiced for her piano lesson. A normal M response would be some grumbling or moaning, but in the end she either decides to tromp off to practice and clean, or she gives up the idea of playing video games for awhile. But this particular afternoon, her alternate personality made a violent appearance. She burst into tears, screamed at me, stomped up and down on the ground and on her way out of room, slammed her hands against anything she could reach.
My first reaction to this crazy display was to laugh. Fortunately, I managed to hold it in and appear appropriately stern and disapproving of such behavior. It's not the first time something like this has happened though, so I spent some time afterward wondering if my daughter needs some anger management classes or something. After pondering it for a little while, I realized that she has probably inherited this particular brand of craziness from her mother. I don't know why it didn't occur to me sooner!
Just to show you just how much poor M is like her mother, let me tell about a little experience from my mission in New York. (No, it's not one of those glowing stories you'll hear told at a fireside or in testimony meeting.)
About halfway through my mission, I was moved into a "threesome" in Flushing, Queens. (A threesome is when you have three missionaries partnered together instead of just two.) One of my companions was a really nice girl I had lived with before who was in the last month of her mission. The other girl I didn't know anything about except that she had not been in the mission field as long as I had.
Well, I quickly learned that there was a reason why my mission president put three of us together. My younger companion was a challenge, to put it lightly. She didn't seem to live in the same world as the rest of us. One of the side effects of that was that if you didn't keep your eyes on her constantly, she would wander off. Of course, as missionaries we are supposed to always stay together no matter what, so with two extra companions, one of us could be talking to people on the street while the other spent her time keeping an eye on the wayward one.
It was an interesting month. Sister I-Live-In-Another-Reality had a few other personality quirks that made her particularly challenging to live with, but my other companion was very mellow and patient and she handled all that stuff so I didn't have to. Unfortunately, when the month ended and she went home, my mission president didn't replace her with anyone else. So it was just me alone with the other girl.
The next three weeks were tough. Patience is not one of my strong suits now, and it was even less so then. One morning I was particularly short-tempered with my companion, and in my irritation, I tried to ignore she was there and just walk as fast as I could to the area we were heading to. Unfortunately, I had forgotten my companion's tendency to wander off, so eventually when I looked back, expecting her to be trailing behind me, she was nowhere in sight.
Complete and utter panic. I had lost my companion somewhere in a busy section of Queens!!! (You have to understand how frightening that is when as a missionary you are NEVER alone.) After a hasty conversation by pay phone, I met up with some of the other sisters in our area, and we set out to look for her. Eventually, we stumbled across her casually ambling down one of the main streets of Flushing.
And that's when it happened. I burst into tears, literally jumped up and down stomping on the sidewalk, and yelled my head off at her. She only seemed mildly surprised at my lunatic display, too, though every one of the hundreds of pedestrians in the area must have been staring at me in bewilderment. (Granted, this was New York, so they probably just shrugged and moved on without giving it another thought.)
So you see, though M didn't know it, she was just echoing her mother's behavior from some 13 years ago. I guess if she has a split personality, I do too.
Comments
If it makes you feel better, last night after listening to two young kids crying and throwing themselves on the floor in tantrums and one older kid whining and crying about who-know-what at the same time, I completely lost it, screaming at the top of my lungs, flinging children this way and that, and finally announcing that every child will be in bed by the stroke of 7pm or SOMEBODY was going to die. So we all lose it sometimes.
PW's kindergarten teacher called me once at the beginning of the year to tell me PW had just basically had a nervous breakdown in class, screaming, crying, and refusing to come out from under a table. I couldn't believe it. She had never done it before (not even that extent at home), nor has she ever done it again since. It was so weird. We still talk about it and wonder. Again, sometimes it's all too much and we just snap. Such a happy thought.
You know, I got put in a threesome with her again right near the end of my mission, and I was told it was because I was so much better at handling her than most of the other sisters, even though my pres knew about my nuclear meltdown! That month we lost her again, even with 2 of us to watch her. It was Halloween, which is such a nasty day in Brooklyn that we were supposed to be home no later than noon. I didn't lose it that day when she finally turned up, but my other comp sure did! (She didn't stomp up and down like a freak like I did though.)