A friend of mine who lives in London recently told me a story that had me shuddering in disbelief. She was on a train going to work when a woman with a young child sat next to her. My friend moved a little to give them more room and put her very expensive handbag on her lap. Suddenly, and much to her dismay, the child promptly expelled the entire contents of his stomach both on her as well as on the bag.
At first, the mother apologised profusely and even gave my friend her contact details and told her to get the bag cleaned up and send her the bill. However, when my friend did just this and sent over the bill a few weeks later, the mother quite sternly said that the bill was far too high and that no one should spend so much money on a handbag anyway. The crowning moment came when she rounded off her message with the words: “Once you have children, you’ll understand how frivolous you’re being.”
Once you start saying ‘My life is better than yours because I’ve chosen prams over Prada’, you’re on a slippery slope to Judgementville
The reality is that despite many people’s croakings about how we have reached a situation where everyone is free to live how they please, in the real world, nothing could be further from the truth. People are quick to judge and even quicker to impose their values about how one should spend their money and once the children “excuse” gets involved in the mix, the gloves are well and truly off.
It’s not something I personally have ever understood. People have been having children since time immemorial and no one has been going around saying that they should stop doing so, yet the minute someone notes that the world does not revolve around you and your child, everyone looks at you like you have a rare disease.
My friend didn’t ask for this lady’s child to vomit on her bag, much like very few of us ask to be rammed into with pushchairs on random Saturday afternoons. Yes, children unintentionally cause havoc all the time simply because they are children and there’s nothing wrong with that, but once you start saying ‘My life is better than yours because I’ve chosen prams over Prada’, you’re on a slippery slope to Judgementville with no stops.
If this benevolent lady didn’t want to take up the responsibility of paying for something that her child had damaged then she shouldn’t have offered, but by trying to make my friend feel small she only succeeded in making herself look petty and, well, pretty ridiculous.
Always one to rise to the occasion, my friend clearly took one for the team when she replied: “Your choices aren’t better than mine, they are merely different. And you’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”