The Wrath of Charlie (and more chicken stories)

When we bought the giant chicken, there were two of them. I had left the girls with the task of choosing the best one for Sandy, but we all felt a little guilty for the last rooster standing. When we went back to that grocery store a few weeks later, we had to swoop by the henhouse to check on his general welfare. We were surprised to find him anything but lonely.



Apparently, our roosters are proud fathers, as many hatched in our absence. We decided we should now feel guilty for leaving him a single father with his partner many hundreds of miles away.

In the grocery store, Charlie has this obnoxious way of amusing himself by turning around, grabbing some food item, pretending to gobble it up, then dropping it behind him, unconcerned with the squishability of it or anything it may land on. The only way to get him to stop is to let him out of the cart, which is far more hazardous.

This week, it was particularly dangerous.



I don't know how it got there. I swear it just jumped in and wasn't carefully selected and loaded with gentility and love. (I will add that it was substantially easier to load than it's father, but that is no admission of culpability.)

Unwilling to endure Round 28 of the Food Drop Game, I warned him, "Charlie, anything you pick up and drop will be immediately put back on the shelf."

He laughed, turned, picked up the most sacred item in the cart, pretended to eat it, then dropped it on the chick's face.

A short walk later, the variety pack of 12 Pop Tarts was back on the shelf.

Charlie's entire face turned red with rage. His veins popped on his forehead and neck. He cried, hiccuped, and cried some more. In an attempt to express the depths of his anger, the following monologue, or as much of it as I can remember, followed:

Dat is it. I will make you sad dat you did dat. I will make you vewwy sowwy. I will make you so sad dat you put dose poptawts back on da shelf. I will leave you house and not live in it anymow and you will be sad. I will not be you boy anymore and you will cwy. I will live somewhew else and dere will be no one to sweep in my bed owr eat my food owr play wif my toys and you will haf to pway wif dem all by yousewf and you will be so sad. You will cwy and you will be sowwy about dem poptawts.

You hawt will bweak when I am gone and you cannot pway Lego Stawwaws [StarWars] wif me because I am gone. And dere will be no one to be you wittle boy anymow.

I calmly go up and down the aisles, making eye contact with no one and filling the cart. After all, Dixie's gymnastics class only lasts so long. At some point, he forgets that he no longer lives in our house in this revenge scenario, because he shifts to the following rant:

And you will not get to eat da foods you love. You can only eat da fishfood. And it is yucky to you. You will not wuv it. You will eat da fish food and you will say, "blach" because fishfood is not a food you wuv. And da fish will not have dere food and dey will be sad and you will be sad because you food is yucky and you fish is sad. And you will get to eat catfood and it is yucky and Schwodingah [Schrodinger] will scwatch you because it is his food and he will be sad and you will be sad and you will say, "Dis is yucky" because you do not wuv it.

And you will get to eat only the catfood and da fishfood and da . . .

as we approach the dairy case, Charlie has run out of foods that I don't love, so Melody supplies him with some ideas. I think she started with liver. After a good thirty seconds dedicated to that, he paused while she supplied peanuts. Once that tirade was over, she offered up sticks of butter. Then raw meat. Rant. Then celery. Rant. Then pizza. Rant. Then ice cream. Rant. Then chocolate.

Pause. He looks up at our faces to see that we are both choking back laughter.

No! Chocowate is not a good one because she wuvs dat and it is not yucky fo hewr!

In the frozen food section, I pause to ask him if he remembers why he is mad. Nothing. I ask him what he did to be in trouble. Nothing. I remind him that he cannot throw the food in the cart because something will get broken. If he can stop playing that unsafe game while we finish up, we can swing back by for Pop Tarts. But only if he stops trying to make mommy feel sad.

Hug. Wipe away little Charlie tears.

We finish the $209 trip in peace before leaving, Pop Tarts in bag. (Bonus: in addition to fabulous entertainment and no more food thrown, the rant gave me the opportunity to sneak some Christmas gifts in the cart because he had lost all concept of where he was and what we were doing around him.)

Because Dixie's gymnastics is now 90 minutes, we had time to swing by the house so that Dixie would find a surprise waiting when we get home.



Mail! And a three foot chicken!



Which actually looks quite in place at our house.