Well, not exactly, but it sure came close. I took Mo and Co to the play area at the local mall the other day in order to satisfy several needs at once: My need to return and re-purchase items, their need to run around and all of our need to get out of the heat. The play area has had a face-lift in the last few months, but the erstwhile security guards are still more concerned with preventing moms from bringing in their ristretto tall non-fat extra-hot no-whip half-sweet sugar-free gingerbread latte from Starbucks than keeping out children with facial hair and acne.

Gone is the picnic theme from when we we first started going to this play area. Gone, too are giant hot dog, cupcake, and slice of watermelon. The whole area has become Looney Toon/Port Norfolk amalgamation. Bugs Bunny and pals feature prominently over the playscape, which also includes a container ship, freight trains, cargo boxes, and a huge tug boat. And the whole joint has motion detecting sound elements so that once a child’s foot runs past the boat, you get honest to goodness tug boat sounds. In the beginning, there were a few moms who scratched their heads between covert sips of lattes, wondering, “Good gracious, will that infernal fog horn never end?!” — yeah, sorry ladies.

Anyway, we’re at the play area. The girls are playing amidst the throng of other children whose mother’s think like me and I am pinching grapes from my ziploc bag in my purse into my mouth out of the eyeline of the security guard. We’ve been here for a good while and I’m really enjoying that both Mo and Co are old enough to play together and to play independently. I’m not saying I can just sit back and re-read “Twilight” while the run around, but I don’t have to be shadowing them as they meander here, there, and everywhere.

I see this one little girl, a toddler really, atop one of those climbers shaped like a hybrid freight train. The rear of the train flattens out into a slide ramp and as she makes her way towards it, I know exactly what is about to happen. Off balance, unstable toddler feet, lots of other kids weaving in and out — little girl takes a faceplant on the slide. Adding insult to injury — she doesn’t slide down, just kind of bounces on her face onto the floor. And lays there, crying. I start looking around wondering whose kid this is because clearly she’s hurt and scared. Just as I start to get up, this woman, who has some kind of genetic abnormality where her Apple iPhone has been fused onto her ear and shoulder, strolls on over, hoists the girl up under her armpit and walks away to sit back down. Okayyyyyyyyy. I mean, could you put the phone down for a second and make sure your kid’s facial features are in the same place you last left them?

Fast forward about 15 minutes. Mo is playing with some little girl on this climber shaped to look like Daffy Duck rowing a crate towards the port. The girl is standing on Daffy’s chest, Mo is laying on her stomach atop the crate and the conversation is involving pirates, mermaids, and who knows how to use the toilet all by themselves. Co, desperate to be where the action is, starts to insert herself onto the boat. The little girl, oblivious to the relationship between Mo and Co, begins to tell Co, “No, you can’t be on here. No, you can’t play here. No. No.” Now, I don’t like it when Mo does that to Co and vice-versa, and I doubly don’t like it when some little knock-kneed, buck-toothed, five year old waif does it to either of them. Still, I can’t get all mama bear up in here, so I call out to Mo, “Hey, Mo! You tell that girl that Co can play with you guys!” to which she says, “OK” and then resumes her position on the crate. Gee, thanks. And so for the next minute or two, there is this conversation dance of sorts between the girl saying no, Co saying yes, me calling Mo for reinforcements, and Mo just saying, “OK“.

Finally, Co decides enough is enough and really starts to maneuver her way into the boat. Ol‘ girl ain’t havin‘ that and in her infinite five year old wisdom, begins to pick Co up under her armpits to hoist her off of the boat. OH HAYLE NO. I couldn’t have been more than six to eight feet away from this, but I covered that ground in about 2 steps.

“Excuse me!” I said in my best-Homey-don’t-play-that-voice, crossing over to the boat. “Do not pick her up. Put her down. Now, ” and I gave her the stink eye so bad, her little hands just released Co and hung in the air, unsure of what they were and what they should be doing.

Now, a mom can’t roll up on somone else’s child like that without the offending child’s mother sensing a disturbance in the force. Sure enough, a voice calls out, “Emma (or you can insert your own overly popular name here)!” and head cocked to the side, maintaining proper shoulder to iPhone to ear connectivity, here comes cell phone mom from the faceplant incident. It was clear that this girl was her daughter — not only did they look alike, but the toddler did call her “mom”. Still, all I could do was look at this woman and wonder, who do you have on the phone that is so important, you can’t even pocket that thing to tend to your children? I mean, just tell the person, “Hey, let me call you right back.” What about a “Hang on a sec!” — you don’t even have to hang up. The woman didn’t even look in my direction, barely looked at her kid, but I’d like to think her mumbled, “Sorry about that,” was directed at me and not to the conversationalist on the other end of the phone.

I felt myself getting all Bruce Banner right in the play area, ready to unload an acerbic diatribe on her ass, but the feeling was short-lived. Mo decided she needed to use the potty — now. And when you gotta go, you gotta go. So, we went.