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The Goddess Speaks
I'VE been a mother for four months and just yesterday, my horizons expanded tenfold when I discovered that when it comes to "Pat the Bunny," "pat" is a verb, not a proper noun. Becoming a mom is like putting on a pair of glasses for the first time and realizing things can be much clearer. It has even brought into focus some new irritants, namely, reckless drivers, able-bodied elevator riders and sidewalk hogs. Motherhood
fine-tunes
fool radarI have always been turned off by those "baby on board" signs in the back of vehicles, but now understand why parents use them. It's a fact that there are more nincompoops driving these days, but when you have a baby with you, you notice them more. For instance, a woman who didn't slow down while making a right turn on Alewa Drive today. Perhaps if she put down her cellular phone she would have seen that stop sign.
Then there was the teen-ager on Piikoi Street in the silver Acura with the tinted windows blasting his hip-hop music so loud that I could feel the thumping bass. I guess the speed limit was not to his liking, so he sped up to pass me. He sure had one over me when he beat me to the stoplight. Normally, this type of behavior would just make me think, "What a stupid fool." But now that I'm a mom I feel more rage. "Doesn't this idiot know I have a baby in the car?"
I suppose my maternal instincts are kicking in to help me protect my baby from harm. Maybe I should create a new bumper sticker that says, "Lawyer on Board." Perhaps that would mean more.
ANOTHER maternal peeve is the elevator. New parents quickly learn the location of every elevator. Prior to motherhood, I would never consider them as a means of transportation between a few floors, but I've discovered that there is a different breed of people out there: best known as lazy.
I was at Liberty House Ala Moana yesterday needing to get from the second to the third floor. None of the others waiting was old, had a stroller, was in a wheelchair or sporting a cane. They all seemed to be young and robust. But for some reason, they needed to use the elevator. I couldn't make the first trip up because my stroller couldn't fit. Believing that my baby and I were the only ones with a valid reason to take the elevator, my heart began beating faster as irritation set in.
Later, at the Ward Centre parking garage, the same thing happened. A young man got in on the second floor to ride to the first floor, squeezing in with me and my stroller and acting annoyed that the elevator was too small for all of us. He could certainly have used the 15 or so steps down to tone up that loose butt of his, I thought.
My third peeve has to do with sidewalk sharing. I am a runner and strive to be considerate in that I step aside onto the grass when I see a wheelchair or stroller approaching. Although there are many walkers and runners who graciously share the sidewalks, there are those who simply refuse to step on the grass to make way for someone on wheels. They desperately try to avoid the grass, as if it were made of molten lava.
I don't want to be a whiner. I keep hearing that old Johnny Mercer song, you know, "Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative"? I don't want to be negative, as motherhood has been such a positive experience. So I'll accentuate the positive and conclude that motherhood is an insightful process. It has certainly expanded my horizons by showing me there are more nincompoops in this world than previously thought.
Stacy Yuen Hernandez is a writer living in Honolulu who only recently started taking elevators.
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