#124: Payback
‘Just you wait’ may be one of my favorite refrains from Hamilton, but considering I started hearing it some time in my first trimester and haven’t stopped hearing it since, I’m pretty grumpy when it gets applied to me.
Feeling a bit tired and sore? Just wait until the baby’s here.
Baby exhausting you? Just wait until she’s running around and talking.
Enjoying this stage? How dare you express happiness! Just you wait until she’s an angry teenager!
Hating this stage? Just you wait until they’re adults and they don’t need you any more!
What does it even MEAN? It’s a meaningless phrase! Why are we waiting?? Everything is ‘just wait’, both good things and bad. It’s ridiculous. I can hardly make a single statement about what I’m feeling without some mouthbreather chuckling ‘just you wait’ at me, like they know everything about my life and my future. Sometimes it’s even people who don’t have kids who say this! BAN ‘JUST WAIT’ STATEMENTS.
Anyway, this is basically a transcript of a conversation I was forced to have with a pushy grandma seated next to me on the plane from Austin. I had headphones in. I was reading my phone. I was looking out the window. AND YET. I have no idea what she meant by ‘payback’. Like, Momo was being good right now like some sort of service for which she’d demand payment at a later date. Or like my good opinion of her was something for which she’d enact vengeance – how dare I enjoy my time with her now. Just wait.