Witch Lady

Disclaimer: my nephew is perfect and exempt from this post. :D

My brother and sister will immediately know what I mean by the title of this post. I am referring to the scary woman who used to live at the bottom of our cul-de-sac and who would come outside and scream at any child who got within 5 feet of her driveway or yard. She even used to try to argue that she “owned” the part of the cul-de-sac that was in front of her house.


Sadly, I am afraid that this may be my future. I went into Hamley’s on Regent Street today with a friend and I swear there was a moment where I actually growled at a child. Granted, that child was all hopped up on free sugar and running around like a demon fresh out of hell, but still. I growled. The poor 6 year old froze, free balloon in one hand, massive lollipop in the other and stared at me like I was a villain fresh out of his worst nightmares. To be fair, it was a pretty big growl, I think I used teeth, and I even scared myself a little bit.


It’s not that I hate children, either. I adore little babies and find myself coo-cooing at them on the train. I love, love, love my nephew (even when he wakes me up at 6 in the morning after I’ve had 3 hours sleep and urgently wants to a) jump on the trampoline, b) have me make a breakfast he won’t eat and c) tell me an extremely convoluted story involving all the characters of the movie CARS – which I haven’t seen). I love my friend Angela’s daughter Bella. I love my friend Marianne’s daughter Zoe. In fact, I love all of my friends’ children. Probably because my friends are all well-educated decent members of society who raise their children well and teach them manners.

I recognise that having children is both a blessing and a task of enormous responsibility and I have nothing but respect for those parents out there trying to make it through the day and retain their sanity.

I think, like my friend Caryn, I just don’t like children in large quantities. And I especially don’t like loud, ill-behaved children. Spending a half hour in Hamley’s brought out every evil bit of child hatred in me. If I had a cottage and an oven, I might just have lured a few of them with candy and roasted them – just to shut them up. I stood open-mouthed as parents completely ignored their little rugrats, watching with apathy as they threw things, ran into people, or just stopped in the middle of the store and started screaming. For some reason, tourist children were the worst. Do they not have words for “Knock that off or I’ll give you something to cry about?” in other languages???

I know I had my moments but that kind of behaviour would never have been tolerated when I was a child. You behaved in public or you didn’t get to see much public. (As someone who was once grounded to her room – for a MONTH – I can say that my parents truly meant it).

I really, really don’t want to be that mean old woman in the neighbourhood who hates the little children and is always yelling at them. But I don’t think I’ll ever find temper tantrums “cute” or screaming children acceptable (if they scream, leave! go home! Unless you’re buying medical supplies or food, there’s nothing that can’t wait). I find no joy in being kicked by wayward future juvenile delinquents whilst their parents laugh and coddle them.

In this case, I know stepped right into the frying pan by going into a toy store and expecting peace and quiet. And so I recognise that. But I still send up a silent plea to all the parents out there – Control your children, please. A lil’ Benedryl slipped into some Juicy Juice has never hurt anyone, neither has a firm smack on the bottom. Keep them in hand now, or who knows – next thing you know, they’re going to be on CCTV kicking in the front window of JD Sports.

And I’ll be that old lady on the corner yelling at them and raining hellfire down with my custom built titanium cane.

Federman out.