Some of you may have read the story about a toddler having a tantrum on a Southwest flight, resulting in the mother and child getting kicked off the plane; in an MSNBC poll, 78% of people voting agreed with the decision to chuck them off the plane. Southwest apologized. Yet and still the mother is suing Southwest for damages. Well. Just glad it ain’t me.

Years and years ago, I was standing in a line at Traffic Court or Small Claims Court, I don’t remember now which, since they are in the same building; there were probably five people in the line, which was moving pretty fast. A woman was in line behind me who had a small child. There was a bench nearby where people were sitting and waiting and as I recall this child was climbing on the bench and chattering to himself. Honestly, I didn’t pay much attention: I had a young son at the time, and I had volunteered in schools with small children so this business with the kid probably didn’t even penetrate. A woman somewhat past middle-age, well-dressed, was sitting at one end of the bench. She said in Spanish to the mother, Que niño tan mal educado: “What a badly brought up child.”

This was surprising; I hadn’t seen that the child was behaving that badly, first of all, and second, most of us see children misbehaving, we roll our eyes, we frown, but we don’t say anything, we just hope to get out of their vicinity as soon as humanly possible. But this woman had scolded the mother. And scolded her in a humiliating way; saying your kid was badly brought up is the worst thing you can say to a Hispanic mother. Now if that had been me, that scolding would have been enough for me to grab my kid and get him under control, torn between anger at him, at the woman, and enough shame to wish the earth would open up and swallow me.

This mother got out of line, stalked over, grabbed her kid, shoved him hard into his stroller, and jammed a bottle into his mouth. The kid started to scream. The mother, who had of course provoked that response, got back in line and then said, in Spanish, “You’re a bitter old woman, you ought to mind your business.” And at that moment, I was called to the window at the far end of the room and didn’t get to hear the rest of the argument, darn it.

Anyway, what struck me is that the mother actually dared to say something back to the woman. To me, she was clearly out of line. If your toddler is acting badly, you suck it up when someone calls you out: That was the code when I was growing up, and even when I was a young mother. It was a rare, and shameless, mother who didn’t quietly take her lumps, even when they were undeserved. Children were not supposed to act out in public in a way that reflected badly on their parents. I know if I ever did anything to shame my folks, I was the one who was in big trouble.

Now, I’m a mother. My son had embarrassed me in public places. One day we were at a Denny’s restaurant and he suddenly got hyper when we were seated at the table and waiting for our order; this was when he was in his very very Terrible Twos, and actually the situation got so bad that we got up and left a few minutes later without eating, but not before people sitting at a nearby table got up, walked by and the woman said, “Your baby is ruining everybody’s meal.” Another time, we were in a Carl’s Jr.’s and I was in line to order food, and someone said, “Look at your kid.” I turned around; my son had climbed up onto the divider between two booths and everybody was looking at him. I hurried over and pulled him down from there, angry and embarrassed at the show he had put on; it still embarrasses me today thinking of it. The worst, though, was when I took him to Sunday Mass; he could never sit still, was always squirming and struggling to get away from me, and loudly vocalizing his displeasure. I did the best I could to keep him quiet, but it was just impossible, and often I would end up standing outside the side door or just inside the door while the Mass was going on. One Sunday, the priest said from the lectern, “You can tell which parents don’t bring their children to church regularly, they don’t know how to behave when they are here.” I knew he was referring to me. Luckily, most of the people in church were too kind to turn around to look. That was the last time I ever set foot in Sunday Mass.

When your children act out in public, people assume that you haven’t raised them right, and that you let them run wild all the time. In fact, when they are small it is very easy for them to get into mischief no matter how vigilant a parent you are, or how good your children are; that one moment you turn away or let go of their hand is all they need. With difficult and energetic children, as my son was, you also learn to keep them out of the public eye as much as possible. Unless you want to be angry and embarrassed all the time, you keep them home and only take them to places, like their grandparents’ homes or parks, where it’s okay to let them off the leash for a bit, until they’ve gained enough self-control so they can be trusted to behave themselves. Once I figured this out, we were okay.

How times have changed; some parents don’t seem to be embarrassed by anything. At the Laundromat, for example, you see children chase each other screaming and hollering all around the place, tear up everything that isn’t nailed down, push the carts around and bang them into the washing machines, the soda machines, the other carts, trash cans, stopping in the middle of the aisle as people struggle to get around them with their arms fully loaded with laundry baskets. These children manage to climb up and run along the top of the machines, chasing each other up and down the counters where people are supposed to be folding their clothes, stopping in front of you to stare, mucus clotting their snotty noses, coughing swine flu virus all over your clean laundry. Meantime, the mother, and sometimes the father, just keep doing what they’re doing, loading clothes into machines, folding clothes, every so often ineffectually calling the children’s names in a monotone voice without even raising their eyes to look in the kids’ direction. The other patrons and the attendants are left to deal with the children: Please leave that alone, please don’t touch that, please don’t push those buttons, please don’t step on those clothes, please leave that cart alone, please watch where you’re going. On the rare occasion you manage to catch the mother’s eye with a look, you get a dirty look back! The rarest occasion of all, after you’ve been dealing with their children for what seems like hours, they finally go and snatch the child up and bring them over to their side for a moment, the child wails indignantly, then sneaks off again, this time with the invaluable knowledge that you are the person they want most to bother, pester, tick off, to see if their parents will start something with you over them; it’s the most excitement they’ve had in a long time, and they are not about to stop now. They circle you slowly, with buzzard eyes, and deep inside they are plotting ...

About three months ago, a child was carrying on, running around, pushing a cart, in the Laundromat where I was washing. She had nearly hit me once with the cart, I had told her to be careful, and her mother and I had already exchanged looks, and of course mom kept loading her clothes and calling lackadaisically to the kid and the kid ignoring mom. Sure enough, the kid started circling closer and closer each time she went by me, giving me the testing eyeballs; finally the third time around, she rammed me hard with the cart. I suppressed my first instinct, and instead said, in a very loud voice so that everyone in the Laundromat heard and turned around to look, “Lady, your kid just hit me with the cart.” The woman left what she was doing and came over and grabbed her child, the child started wailing, and the woman looked around at me as if to say see what you did, then said, “You don’t got no kids, I bet, no man would want nobody like you.” I looked at her and my lips started to curl up in a smile; I couldn’t help it, I started to laugh. A little later, the woman brought her cart back close to where I was folding my clothes and threw her parting shot as she was leaving, “I bet your kids are all in Juvy.” First I had no kids, suddenly I had a ton of delinquent children. I turned, laughing, and said, “No, but thanks for your concern.” She dragged her little darling out behind her.