Momming as a Former Mean Girl

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It’s my lunch break and I’m approaching the Walgreen’s drive-thru line to pick up a prescription for my daughter’s Albuterol. It is quite literally the third time I’ve been here in the last month and a half. Edie, my daughter, has RSV for the second time. I feel like she just kicked the lingering cough from her first bout of RSV, but now here we are. She is in the backseat, mercifully sleeping.

The singular perk of the pandemic is that I still work remotely, so when my kid gets sent home from daycare for the umpteenth time with a fever, I am fortunate to (usually) not have to burn all my PTO caring for her. But it’s still quite a dance—moving meetings around to when I *hope* she’ll be napping and sometimes having to let emails pile up while I rush her over to the pediatrician (which should be plural because at this point we’ve seen every single doctor in the practice. Multiple times.).

So, today, as I approach the Walgreen’s pharmacy line, I feel sweaty and flustered because I know we have at least five days of breathing treatments ahead of us. It’s also 90-something degrees and I didn’t think before I chose to throw on a long-sleeve shirt because when daycare contacts me to pick Edie up, I generally just hop to it with little regard for what I look like. There is only one drive-thru line that is operational at this Walgreen’s.

But all of a sudden, there is a white SUV in the imaginary line beside me.

“What are they doing?” I wonder aloud.

The white SUV is stopped next to me. I’m two cars deep in the line.

For a moment, I suppose they’re just stopping to check something. Maybe recalibrate their GPS. Make sure they remembered to grab their bags in the checkout line.

Then, I realize that they realize it’s a single line for the drive-thru.

Are you EFFING kidding me?!

They’re cutting their wheel. Inching closer towards the line I’m in.

They are trying to CUT in front of me.

I want to lay on my horn. I consider rolling down my window to display a well-placed (albeit unmanicured) finger. My first instinct is a string of expletives—all strung together to make brand-new expletives. The kind George Carlin would tip his cap to.

Here’s the truth: I was a mean girl in high school.

All four years. Just mean. I threatened physical violence against others regularly. I was jealous and petty, and I spread rumors gleefully. Like a sword and shield, I yielded my middle finger and acerbic wit. I sucker punched a girl in the face once because she liked my boyfriend and laughed at me when I walked by. (Maybe she did laugh, maybe she didn’t. It was enough of an excuse to dot her eye on a Saturday afternoon at the Piggly Wiggly). I laughed at the same girl the next day at school when I realized how bruised up she was from our scuffle. I had hateful nicknames for every person I didn’t like. In 11th grade, I looked at the teacher who oversaw our journalism class dead in her eyes and called her a “skank-lover.” I even made my own mom cry on a semi-regular basis by emphasizing to her how much I couldn’t wait to leave her house and move all the way to California and never look back. (I never actually moved to California, by the way. Mean girl pipe dreams don’t hold much water, after all.)

At the time, I thought most of my antics were funny. And if they weren’t funny, they were at least justified.

And now, I can feel it—the urge to unleash all my mean on this son-of-a—I mean, this white SUV that’s about to essentially break in front of me in this Walgreen’s line. When I’m just trying to get my kid’s Albuterol.

Then, I take a breath.

I catch sight of my sleeping daughter in the rearview. Cherubic cheeks and mussed strawberry blonde hair. She is the epitome of innocence. She is the living embodiment of all that is right in this world.

Even though she can’t see because she’s asleep, and even though she probably wouldn’t remember because she’s just a year old, I remember that she is always watching. I’m her example of what a strong woman is in this world. Of what a good mother is. Of what a decent human being is supposed to be. None of those states involves me going off on a total stranger because they inconvenience me. They haven’t infringed upon my family’s safety or my personal dignity, so there’s zero excuse for having a meltdown. Maybe this car is scrambling to get their kid some Albuterol, too. Maybe it’s their second bout of RSV—or God forbid, something far worse. It could be that they just didn’t know there was one line.

I’m still annoyed, but I stop what I’m doing and wave the white SUV in. The wave is a little overly emphatic, so it’s probably obvious that I’m annoyed. And I’m definitely rolling my eyes under my oversized sunglasses. But I don’t cuss them up and down or defer to any of my high school antics.

[former] mean mom with the sweetest baby
[former] mean girl with sweet baby
Make no mistake, my baser urges will probably always exist, but my love for my daughter means I won’t allow them to prevail. I’m working on getting in the habit of being decent, whether she’s watching or not. Because one day, she will be fully alert, her big blue eyes trained on Mom—waiting to see what I do when my patience is tested.

And because I want so much to raise a kind daughter—the kind of woman who knows how to properly pick a battle and who will demonstrate immense empathy—I will tell my inner mean girl to shut the actual **** up.

 

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Jamie Hudgens
My name is Jamie, and I'm a writer, editor, fitness instructor, and self-proclaimed hype woman. I've been in B'ham almost 10 years, but I grew up in Eufaula, Alabama (yep, the town with the pretty houses on the way to the beach). I received my M.A. in English/creative writing with a focus on creative nonfiction from UAB in 2015, and I have an undergraduate degree in creative writing with a focus on poetry from UAB as well. I am the content marketing manager at Alabama Media Group, overseeing all sponsored content, blog, infographic, and white paper content. My husband and I have been married just over a year, and we've been together for 6 years. We live in Homewood, and in June 2021, we added a new member to the party: our baby girl, Edie. When I'm not working, I'm spending a large chunk of the day figuring out this tiny human. But during whatever free time I have, you'll catch me doing HIIT and barre classes, reading (memoirs and feminist lit are my favorite), and experimenting in the kitchen.