Exhausing

She's got the attitude of, of, . . . I didn't expect this until the teenage years.

She's willfully contrary. She's like a mean drunk looking to pick a fight. She wants to carefully ascertain your position on a subject so that she knows how to tell you just how wrong you are.

She thinks "But I don't want to!" is a reasoned and persuasive argument. She uses "I've gotta go potty!" like a get-out-of-jail-free card—and then kicks off her pants and underwear in the public restroom and watches carefully to see just how pissed off she can get you.

"I know!" she'll say, when you feel obliged to correct a misapprehension or to emphasize a point. "But, but, but: I know!"

"Poop!" is the height of sophisticated humor, a source of never-ending hilarity that is never amiss in any situation.

She refuses to eat the meal she requested, picks at your own, and then throws a fit when mealtime is declared over. She regards "But I still hungry" as a great trump card, and often plays it in conjunction with "I've gotta go potty"—the toddler equivalent of a royal flush, she reckons.

If the meal was at a restaurant, in public, she demands to be taken to yet another restaurant. "No, I want nother restaurant!" she'll shriek, apparently thinking you could have been unclear on the concept. When no other restaurant is forthcoming, she will fling herself about in abject misery, wailing and bemoaning her fate, and forcing intervention just to make sure she doesn't do herself injury by slamming her head into a hard surface or rolling out into the street.

Any such intervention is seriously cramping her style, an insult to her personhood and human rights, and reason enough to recommence screaming with renewed vigor.

I begin to wonder, at times, how much further this can go on without someone calling Child Protective Services. But no one ever does. Older men chuckle knowingly; older women smile and say things like "That's what Sundays are for" (whatever that means); younger women seem to think it's cute; other children just want to know "Why's she crying?" Younger men don't notice us at all. It's like we're invisible: does not compute.

And then, most often, we manage to find some face-saving way to get her buckled in the car seat with her pretending that that's what she wanted all along.

And now she looks so cute as she sleeps. So innocuous.