Misanthrope in the City

Do you ever have those days when you wish you were so old that you could mutter unkind things about everyone you had to deal with, and nobody would bother with you because of your age?

I do, with some frequency, and today was one of those days.

I'm not even in a bad mood, really. I just don't like people very much. I spent an hour and half at the playground with O this morning, and I wanted to slap just about every other parent there, and a few of the kids besides. There were the mothers who leave the gates swinging open, even though they had to open them to get in, leaving the temptation of freedom open to every kid in the place. There was a dad who kept turning on the sprinklers and splashing other kids, even after one mom asked him not to get her son wet. There was an obnoxious grandmother from Melbourne, Australia, who was trashing the MBTA for having "old trains." (Now, I can think of a million reasons to disparage the MBTA, but who cares that the Red Line from Harvard Sq. isn't a brand new train?)

Then there are the preschool mothers. O has only had one full week of school, and already I'm getting the frosty smile and dismissive conversation reserved for hired help on this Hill. I always go into a school year assuming that, as a full grown adult, educated, polite (in public, I am!), and possessing the ability to chit-chat when necessary, I will at least be given a trial before I'm convicted of NOT BEING A PARENT.

Not that I really want any of these people as friends, but it would be nice to be treated as a proper citizen of the world, especially when I have just a close, and sometimes a more functional relationship with my preschooler that they do.

Or is that the problem?