Egg on Carpet - What was I Doing?

Asalamalaikum :D

From my bedroom I could hear a strange cracking sound followed by quick swift scratching noises. I couldn’t make out what it was that my two year old was doing, all I knew was that my carpet was in trouble and so was I. 

As I make my way over to the half a dozen broken eggs smeared and “cooked” into the carpet with a toilet brush “spoon”, my first worry is not the smell nor is it the landlord’s reaction, it is the dreaded question. The dreaded question is often asked by friends and family who either have no kids, had them a few decades ago or have a team of domestic helpers including nannies, cooks, butlers and drivers. “What were you doing?” they ask the ‘helper-less’ houseparent, clicking their tongues and shaking their heads.

The houseparent has a limited number of reactional routes they may embark on. The first and easiest is to turn into an anger tornado, ripping apart the questioner and their question with questions of our own. ‘Do you know how much work being a stay at home parent is?’. This reaction only confirms what is really meant by the question – that your’e a bad parent. Your anger outburst only serves to provide proof. So now you’re a bad parent with anger management problems.

Image Source:  www.xacto.com

Another option we can take is to exude excuse extravaganza. I was breastfeeding my five month old when my son created his carpet omelete. But no, that excuse is not good enough. Actually nothing you were doing can be used as an alibi. Except maybe to say ‘I was giving birth at the time’, even then perhaps that answer may not suffice. I could then go on to describe my difficult day, how difficult it is to care for three kids under three and just how difficult it was to stop him from the egg disaster whilst having a baby latched onto my body. Again, this reaction only confirms what is really meant by the question – that you’re a hopeless parent and your excuses just demonstrate that you’re a hopeless parent with hopeless excuses.

Of course we could also take a more modern approach and say that we are progressive, liberated parents. We have liberated our children from the shackles of sensibility and decent behaviour. We allow them to explore the world free from parental intervention. After all egg cracking develops fine motor skills and brush scrubbing develops gross motor skills. He also learnt tactile differences between the carpet, the yolk and the whites. His observation skills are improving while he watches me play my own version of the egg and spoon race as I try to chase the thick liquid into my utensil. And look at the beautiful contrast in the egg white stains, the orange yolk stains and the way the egg is splattered and dripping off the adjacent wall. Perhaps he will become a great artist one day? No? Yet again this confirms what is really meant by the question – that your’e a stupid parent and by saying all this you sounded even stupider.

Image Source: manmadediy.com

So when my husband comes home tonight and see all hopes of our rental bond being returned to us vanish and poses the dreaded question to me what will I do? Perhaps I could get angry, I could let out all my excuses, I could justify using modernity or I could just shrug. I think I will shrug my sore from egg scrubbing shoulders. It’s really a lot less effort.

More blogposts on Stain Removal on the Muslim Mum's Mirror