the Day of Lasts

i'd had it. HAD IT. HAD IT. if i had to hear the words, "i wanna be first!" come out of liam's mouth one more time, i honestly did not know what i was going to do. getting into the car ... going up the stairs ... walking into the grocery ... no matter what, no matter where, no matter when, liam had to be first. it was manageable -- a huge nuisance, but manageable -- until he about knocked me over as i held a carton of eggs in my hand in his quest to reach the front door before i did. i'd HAD IT. necessity is the mother of invention, so that night, i devised a plan. the next morning, after liam ate his breakfast (being the first one down to the kitchen, of course), i informed him that the day was to be a different kind of day. i was calling it, officially, the Day of Lasts. i explained that throughout the day, he was not only not going to be first, but that he would -- dear Lord, help me now -- be last. i explained that he would soon see that being last meant nothing different in the long run. he would still be fed, he would still play, he would still get to where we were going. he would learn that being first is simply not important. i'm pretty sure he didn't hear anything i said after i uttered the word "Lasts", based on the sheer panic that swept over his face. but i kept my eye on the goal. he was going to learn a lesson today -- or i was going to die trying. an hour or so later, we joined friends at the museum of natural sciences. i made sure that susanna's feet hit the ground of the parking lot before liam could even get out of the car. when we approached the museum entrance, he brought up the rear of our group. as we waited for the elevator, he had no choice but to let someone else push the button. surprisingly, it was all going fairly well. we'd had only one minor tantrum, and i started to have a glimmer of hope that something positive might actually come out of this experiment. in my mind, i imagined the end of the day when liam would share with chris the invaluable life lesson he had learned, about how being first in such mundane circumstances truly does not matter. i snapped out of my reverie as i began to catch the tail end of a conversation happening beside me. we were standing outside the museum classroom, waiting for the doors to open for the 11:00 session where the kids could pet some animals. the previous class had run long, and a crowd had gathered outside the door. it wasn't a huge crowd, and it was obvious that there would be plenty of space to sit once we were able to go in. and yet, this is what i heard from two women standing a few feet away from me: mother #1: "you know, we were here first." mother #2: "oh, no, i don't think so. we've been here for quite a while." mother #1: "well, we were here actually at 10:45 and just walked off to the side for a few minutes." mother #2: "i'm sorry, but if you want to be first into the room, you really can't just wander off. you have to stay right here where the line forms." and then i watched these two grown women use their high-end strollers to jostle for position as the doors finally opened. just like that, what little resolve i had left in me vanished. i was hit with the sinking feeling that, as good of intentions i had that day, this might just be a lesson that was over my four-year-old's head. shoot, apparently it was over some forty-year-olds' heads. i'll try again -- someday. in the meantime, at any given moment, you might find me trying to explain to liam why there are cars ahead of us on the highway, or why there are people already at the library when we get there, or why some children were actually born before he was. yes, i pledge to give the Day of Lasts another try at some point. if i last that long.