About That Bitch, Lisa Mullins: That Bitch, Lisa Mullins, is my nemesis. I doubt she knows this. I doubt she ever thinks about me. She is cool and condescending, but, in truth, I hate her because she has perfect hair, perfect clothes, perfect children, perfect husband, and a perfect life, and I am jealous. I am the exact opposite: crazy hair, wild children, clothes covered in peanut butter or baby spit, accidental pregnancy, husband who doesn’t help out even when he is sober. So, yes, I would have been slightly jealous regardless.
I could have forgiven her all this if we had met under different circumstances. However, that was not how it happened. This is the story of te first time I “met” Lisa Mullins.
Picture it: a brand-new Chick-fil-a play area. I was there with my kids #1 and #2, and my friend E and her daughter. #1 was just over age two and hot into potty training, and #2 was about 9
Months old.
Now, #1 had been a bear to potty train, but he had been over a month without an accident, and I was feeling smug. He always went commando (still does) because he couldn’t tell the difference between undies and a diaper.
E and I were chatting, and I was helping #2 walk/crawl around the play area. #1 was playing up in the play structure with E’s daughter, B.
In walks Lisa Mullins, looking like she’d just stepped out of a salon after hopping out of an Ann Taylor Loft ad. She was accompanied by one of her slightly less-but-still-rather-fabulously turned out friends. Their older children went to play, while Lisa held her baby on her lap as she chatted. That baby never burped, cried, fussed, or, I convinced, blinked. He just sat there, cooing softly.
Then: disaster! Lisa’s daughter shot put of the slide, shouting “poop! Poop! There’s poop in the slide.”
CRAP!
I knew right away who’d done it. A moment later, #1 came out of the slide, covered in mess.
Me, still hoping against hope it wasn’t true, “#1, did you have to poop up there ? Did you make a poop?”
#1, with poop all over himself, “no poop, mama! Me no poop!”
#1 has an issue with the truth, by the way.
So, I handled it well, if handling it well can be defined as completely freaking out. I threw #2 at E and grabbed a pack of wipes out of my bag, prepared to handle the carnage.
Meanwhile, That Bitch Lisa Mullins and her friend were shrieking, “poop? Poop! Oh my goodness that is disgusting! Quick, take off your socks, take off tights!” Then, That Bitch Lisa Mullins turned her steely blue eyes at me and glared. To her friend, she said, “I just don’t know why someone would let their child poop in a play area!”
Let that sink in a moment. Why would I let my child poop in a play area? Why would I wake up and say, “Hey, #1, I have a great idea! Don’t poop in your potty this morning; we’ll go to Chick-fil-a and do it there!! It’ll be great!”
Do I need to say this was one of the worst moments of my parenting life? I was humiliated, frazzled, freaked, and disgusted. The chick-fil-a staff was mad. My friend E was trying to assure me that this would all be funny in retrospect.
It is not, by the way.
So that is how I first met That Bitch, Lisa Mullins. When we met again later, she did remember me, but I remembered her.
Now, everytime I see her, polishing her mom-of-the-year button, I feel angry and tense. She never falters, she never stumbles; she is the stepford wife of stay-at-home moms.
