I've Married a Toddler

It's with distressing regularity that my wife reminds me that I have married a toddler. She's excitable. She has a very low tolerance for delayed gratification. She has a strong tendency to "mine?" everything. She has a tendency to break and/or lose things in her zeal to explore newly-arrived packages ...whether hers, someone else's or something that's supposed to be a shared possession. All of this was on display, today.

We bought "tickets" to a music festival that's happening near the end of spring. I place "tickets" in quotes because this festival doesn't issue traditional tickets. Instead, they issue bracelets with embedded RFIDs. The festival is multi-day and the RFID-enabled bracelets are your only means of gaining entry to the festival grounds. The festival's ticket FAQs — and the Ts&Cs on your ticket purchase-page — inform you that if you lose the bracelets, damage them in a way that renders the RFID unreadable or render the bracelet unwearable, you're fucked (my words, not theirs). While I imagine you're not actually 100% fucked, it's clear from their wordings that they'll make fixing the warned-against actions a pain in the ass.

At any rate, the parcel containing our "tickets", festival guide and assorted schwag arrived, today. Donna, being her usual, excitable self was wanting to immediately tear into it. I, however, was still in the middle of finishing my day's work. She asked if she could open it while I worked.

Given the amount I've paid for the festival "tickets", hotel, airfare, etc. plus the above caveats around the "tickets" dispositions, the prospect of letting her open the package without me was a "not gonna fucking happen" proposition. After scolding her to stop taking the package apart and to put it down and leave me to finish what I was working on (how this festival is being paid for, neh?), she opted to head over to the neighbor's house for a couple hours.

She came back a few hours later, as I was starting to do my "end of work-session" closing-tasks. She was still antsy and giving me a rushed feeling. Not something I tolerate well at any time, least of all when I'm trying to exit a work-session cleanly. So, as she started to hover, it aggravated me to the point of barking at her to wait while I closed out. She sat down on the couch, package on her lap, fidgeting ...which, since she was still in my eye-line, was continuing to aggravate me.

What she never quite seems to get is that aggravation equals distraction. Said distraction slows the speed with which I am able to do things that require concentration (like closing-out my work-session).

Finally done, I started to get up. Seeing me begin to move, she, of course, interjects with "can I open it, now?" I replied, "not yet," and stalked off to sort out the lights and get my phone's camera ready. I'm not really an "unboxing" kind of person, but I have friends that I know were wanting to see the package since they're unable to go. I also wanted picture-evidence in case anything was damaged or missing.

I started disassembling the package, taking pictures as I went. Interjections of "ooh, what's that," and "can I see that" ...and grabbing at things and throwing "metal hands" while I'm trying to take pictures ensued. While it's great that she's happy about the festival and excited, her expression of it was a bit grating while I was trying to sort out "what's what" in the packaging. Really didn't want to accidentally discard or damage anything important, so I wasn't exactly appreciating the distracting antics.

After I identified what of the now splayed-out contents were tickets and what were other things, she immediately grabbed one of the RFID bracelets. She wanted to try it on to make sure it fit. ...And for some completely unknowable reason, decided it would be a good idea to test out the cinching of one of the bracelets. FUCK!

Fortunately, she hadn't cinched it to the point that it needed to be cut off. She hadn't cinched it to the point that she couldn't get it back on once slid off. When I incredulously asked what the hell she thought she was doing fucking with the cincher, she tells me, "I wanted to make sure it would fit on my wrist".

Yeah, that was not exactly the response that I was expecting. I was a bit dumbfounded by the response, actually. Mustering what credulity I could, I replied, "you were concerned the bracelet might not fit" — presumably by being too small —, "so you tightened it??" Sheepish expression on her face was really all she had left. She babbled some further explanations, but they all made less sense than her immediately prior statements, so I couldn't quite "process" them.

At any rate, everything verified to be present (and now someowhat fucked with) and "documented" I packed the festival kit back up and stuffed it into the case I'll be packing my laptop and other critical items into. I'll have to look at it a bit later to make sure I didn't miss anything in all of the festival's documentation or the welcome material in the kit-box.