I saw a funny thing the other day at our shopping centre involving toddlers, which brought back memories when our older daughter was a toddler and the younger one still a baby.
Diane's parents came up from Sydney to stay with us in a holiday house we'd rented on the Gold Coast. I was commuting on weekdays to the office in Brisbane but stayed the weekend with them on the coast. It was in the 70's and shopping centres were closed on Sundays, in Queensland, except on the tourist stip of the coast which was a bit of a novelty for us.
There was a brand new shopping centre, called Pacific Fair, which had just oppened and we decided to go and investigate it on Sunday. The main shop was Myer, and it was there in the ladies fashion section, that things started to go pear-shaped with our little family group. Carol, aged about three was fascinated with a display girl model on a stand and went up to it to shake her hand. The hand came off, Carol got a freight and dropped the hand crashing to the floor, breaking a couple of fingers. Diane saw this and raced over to Carol, picked up the hand, minus two fingers, and tried to stick the hand back onto the model. That's when the entire arm detached itself from the model.
Dad and I were ahead at that stage but had seen the whole thing and were laughing uncontrollably, which of course made Diane even more upset. She grabbed the arm and the hand, minus two fingers and tried to re-attach them both to the model and in the process knocked over a floor-standing ashtray, which went flying, emptying its filthy contents all over the new floor.
By this time, Dad and I were in hysterics, Diane was mad as hell, mostly with Dad and me for finding this funny.
Were we observed? Not at all. There wasn't a member of staff anywhere near.
Nothing has changed since then.
