Today in the grocery store, whilst picking up some bachelor chow, I observed a mother resolving a dispute between what I presume were two of her children, both female. From what I could gather in the few minutes we were in the frozen foods section, it seems child-the-older-and-taller had referenced child-the-younger-and-shorter by saying “hey shrimpy” this, understandably to a certain extent, had upset child-the-younger-and-shorter a bit and she had responded by some sort of physical aggression. I’d guess hitting, but I did not witness the incident.
This is all pretty normal as far as sibling interactions go, but I was honestly surprised by the mother’s reaction. I came in on her lecturing the small child for hitting her older sister, the first thing I heard from the woman’s mouth was “Well, you are shrimpy compared to her.” This was followed by a long lecture about not “acting out” and such. Best I could tell by the older child’s gloating, she had suffered no consequences. The Mother also included a nice tidbit about how one day child-the-younger would grow, perhaps out talling child-the-older and thusly being able to call her “shrimpy”.
I guess the child was supposed to learn two things from this: 1) People bigger than you can call you what they want and 2) You damn well better sit there and take it, lest there are consequences. The whole episode was oddly surreal. Not as surreal as many other things that have happend in my life, but still.
My mother would’ve told me not to call my sister shrimpy, and told her not to hit me, then taken us home. Maybe the 80s were a more sensible time…that’s another sentence I never thought I’d write.
