How to become your child’s hero

What have I done to become a hero to my son? It’s nothing I ever imagined. I thought he hear me in a concert and think how cool it was to have a musician-mom. Or he would see me running a marathon and say, “That’s my mom!” But be has watched those things for his entire life. The novelty has worn off. What finally impressed him? I nearly knocked a vending machine over.

We were heading to a doctor’s appointment. The moment I picked him up from school, he burst into a massive temper tantrum. He screamed through the entire car ride. When we arrived, he refused to get out of the car and said he was hungry. The only thing around was a vending machine full of potato chips. Not our usual fare, but this kid was not just hungry. He was hangry.

I had gone straight from a long day of work to dealing with a screaming child in meltdown. I was also starting to feel my internal temperature rising.

I hurriedly put a $5 bill into the machine. It spit back some quarters, but the bag of potato chips just hung there in the machine, stuck. 

This inflamed my son even more. His screams reached a fever pitch, directed at me. My emotional state also approached a boiling point. But I knew that yelling back at my kid would do me no good. So I stepped back from the vending machine and ran toward it. I rammed it with my shoulder and knocked one side off the ground. The machine landed back on its feet, a few inches from where it started.

The bag of potato chips plopped out.

My son instantly stopped screaming and started hugging and kissing me. He was overjoyed.

“Mom, you saved the day! You saved the day!”

Since this happened, he has often repeated the story of my heroic deed. In his mind, I’m pretty sure that was my greatest accomplishment as a parent.

Maybe some day he will decide that classical musicians aren’t as boring as he thinks. But in the meantime, I’m updating my LinkedIn to include the life skill: “Victorious against Vending Machines.”