So, Do You Like ... Stuff?

Part of parenting—the most important part—is understanding your children’s tendencies well enough to avoid, as best you can because it will happen, embarrassment. I’ll give you a good example of a time when my wife and I actually succeeded in this. It was the only time. More than a year ago, before our youngest came along, we were shopping at Trader Joe’s with our daughter. Having completed the process of my wife asking, “Should we get this?” and me saying, “No,” only to have her place it in the cart anyway, we made our way to checkout.  As we approached our desired checkout line, we saw at the adjacent line a woman with—I’m not exactly sure how to put this delicately, so please bear with me—an extremely large … backside. I don’t want to harp on the enormity of the backside and I am by no means judging, but I must stress that it was impossible to miss. Through some sort of parenting ESP, my wife and I, at the exact same time , gently steered both the car...