Down here they all bounce.

I was traveling by myself with Punk on a 4-hour cross-state drive this weekend and realized it is an effort far more difficult than originally thought. Don't get me wrong, she's a superstar about traveling. She keeps herself amused -- pop on a DVD of her in her infancy and the kid is enthralled in a narcissistic trance for hours, toss her a Magna Doodle and a sippy cup and it's a pretty quiet drive.

Unfortunately, 2 hours into the drive and she was losing her shit this time around. So I pulled the Jeep into a rest area. I unleashed the Punk, grabbed her hand, and together we walked/toddled through the food court. But I sometimes forget: this is my child, and for reasons I should've foreseen a long time ago and gotten a tubal ligation before I ever had a child, she is fiercely independent and stubborn.

Which is a really nice way of saying, she's a massive pain in the ass sometimes, often in public.

So as I was trying to hurry along our exciting leg-stretching break, complete with a Cinnabon purchase, she decided she was over holding my hand. In a public area like a service station food court on a Saturday morning, I'm not letting go of this kid. This is a cute white kid with chubby nom-able cheeks and cute pink tennies -- she's worth her weight in gold on the black market, and damnit, after four stitches in my taint to get her here, I'm not down with that unless I'm getting a cut of the profit.

But she resisted anyway, and with almost 30 lbs. of heft behind her, she threw herself backwards onto the floor, her clammy midget hand slipping out of mine as physics threw her center of balance off and backwards into the wall. With a thud that only the gigantic and disproportional huge head of a toddler can create; one that everyone in the surrounding area heard.

So there's that moment where time stands still, everything is frozen except for your thought process as you try to evaluate the scene, as you see your child recoil and suck the air in and prepare to let out that god-forsaken, ear-piercing, stare-and-judgment-inducing shriek.

Fuck. Oh fuck. Did she hit that hard? Or is the wall hollow? Fuck, is she okay? Is she going to get up? Please don't scream. Please don't scream. Oh fuck she's going to scream. What the fuck do I do with the Cinnabons? Can I get to the vending machine or is she going to be wailing? Stop staring at me lady, I'm trying here. Oh god, she's screaming....

... and then you snap back to reality and snap into Mommy Mode. You spot a nearby bench and put your Cinnabons down and you crouch down and analyze the damage, and you pick her up and snuggle her into the same warm bosom she's come to love in her 19 months, not just because it's comforting but you're praying to whatever gods you haven't denounced that your Victoria's Secret-enhanced boobs will muffle that scream because OH MY GOD THAT SCREAM.

And as everyone was staring and I was trying to gather a toddler and a gigantic mom purse and her stuffed elephant and the Cinnabons (because for the love of god, child, Mommy needs a sugar fix), the kindly grandmotherly woman running the information desk comes scurrying up offering me a bag of ice. And while it was a genuinely sweet gesture, and I know she meant well, all I could think of was, "How in the big blue FUCK do you expect me to hold a bag of ice onto the back of a toddler's skull while driving?" (I mean, REALLY?)

The fact of the matter is, Punk really didn't hit the wall hard. It was a baseboard that was hollow, and the thud sounded far worse than the fall itself. Plus we were two hours into the trip and approaching naptime hard and fast, so basically anything would piss this child off at this point. Top that recipe off with falling down and smacking her head? Hello MELTDOWN!

So all I could spit out -- while attempting to speak over the screaming toddler -- was, "Thank you so much, but really it isn't as bad as it sounded." Which made me look like insane negligent mother of the year. Really, the only worse things that I might have said were, "I hit her far harder at home" or "As long as they bounce, GAME ON!"

And so I scuttled out of the rest area carrying my huge purse, the Cinnabon, and my change I'd hastily tried to gather for a Mountain Dew from the vending machine (only to discover I had $1.50 and all the 20 oz.'s were $1.75, seriously, what the FUCK?!?), and the furious, screaming toddler, and briskly headed back to the Jeep, where I crammed her, kicking and screaming, into her car seat, slammed the door shut, tried to look away from the stares -- most sympathetic, some bewildered, some leering (hey, it was a truck stop) -- said a silent prayer to Our Holy Mother of Vodka, and got back on the road as quickly as I could.

She fell asleep pretty quick after that. Don't worry, it wasn't a concussion. She woke up. She's just kind of cross-eyed now, no big.

Birth control, kids.