You Teach By Example

All of our windows are open these days, allowing for a cool breeze to waft through the apartment, along with various unseemly noises, apparently.

This morning, one of the landlady's adult grandchildren was visiting (the landlady is 96). The woman had brought her child to say hello to great-grandma, and grandma had given the child some money.

The mother kept telling her child to "say thank you," which is commendable. You should teach your children to say "thank you." The lesson went horribly astray when mom started teaching the child to be a screaming harpie bitch. In increasingly more annoyed tones, she was telling the child to "Say thank you. Stand up and say thank you. I'll wait. Say thank you. Stand up and say thank you. Say thank you, or [grandma] isn't going to like you. Say thank you. STAND UP AND SAY THANK YOU. That's it [grandma] doesn't like you anymore. Aren't you going to say thank you?"

Grandma doesn't like you anymore?! WTF? I was so frustrated with the situation that I wanted to run downstairs and say, "Thank you," for the kid. Clearly she's used to her mother's brain defect since it didn't seem to bother her.

I reatreated into the back of the house, vowing to try not to be like that with my children, and I didn't know whether to be sad for the little girl, or start laughing at the whole family.