Piper likes cantaloupe. A lot. She wants it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And snack, too.
“Mom, I’m the cantaloupe whisperer,” she reported yesterday, stroking a melon in the grocery store aisle.
“Really? What do you tell them?”
Piper knocked on the melon. She sniffed it. “You can’t hear me. That’s the whisperer part.”
Piper got stuck again. This was a little different than my last stuck post “Stuck in a Compromising Position.” This one had an extra element of danger and intrigue.
A new grocery store opened in our downtown, so we decided to take a stroll through after dinner. We’re wild party animals aren’t we? I mean, who checks out a new grocery store for fun, right? Geez. Piper thought it was Christmas, though. She was so excited to run the aisles and see the goods. I had to keep reminding her “We’re just looking, P. This isn’t shopping. We just want to see what they have.”
Anyway, we went through the first set of automatic sliding glass doors together. Then the second set opened to deliver us to produce. Piper was dallying a bit behind because she wanted to see everything. And touch everything. And pick up everything. The second set of doors closed behind me and I turned around to see a wall of glass behind me and P. The first set had closed, too, so Piper was stuck in a little glass cage. I swung my arms wide on my side thinking maybe the sensors worked. They didn’t. Piper smiled through the glass. Then she swung her arms wide, too, but nothing happened. She was too short to activate the sensors. She pointed behind her to ask if she should go out the other way. I pressed my hands to the glass and mouthed “NO!” The parking lot with zooming cars was on the other side. We stared at each other a moment more. Then Piper began dancing. I’m not sure if she was actually trying to activate the motion sensors and open the door or if the moment was just ripe for dancing. You never know with P. Either way, the glass doors still didn’t budge. So she danced more and added ballet leaps. The leaps must have done it. Mid-pirouette the doors slid open and Piper danced her way in produce.
“That was cool, Mom. I like this store already,” she said.
The problem with piperism is its intoxicating power. She knows she almost has 30,000 hits. It’s gone to her head. It’s given the Piper a kind of swag previously unseen. If you were in Whole Foods today and you saw a haggard mom and an adorable little blond girl dressed in her crushed velvet emerald green holiday dress (I probably don’t need to explain Piper’s fashion choices at this point, dear reader), you probably witnessed the true corruption of a power like piperism. She knows we find her funny. She can make strangers in the aisle bust a gut. No one can keep a straight face in her presence. It all just encourages her more. Here’s a run down, aisle by aisle, of Piper’s abuse of power.
Fruit and Vegetables: “Mom, those apples look like your boobs!”
Bread Aisle: “Want me to sing the naked song Dad sings every night at bathtime?”
Frozen Foods: “Ice cream! Let’s get ALL of it.”
Dairy: “Jingle bells. Batman smells. Robin laid an egg…”
Canned Foods: “Come on, Mom. You don’t need sauce in a jar. You cook just fine.”
Grains: “Ooh. Let’s get some of that whole wheat pasta that helps me poop.”
You get the idea. She’s completely inappropriate. I have no power against it.
I beg you to stop encouraging her. It’s the only way to bring down the dictator.
piperism 