Carefree or careless?

By Kerryn Vaughan

31st May 2020 (first published on Girls With Hammers 5th October 2019)

I recently caught up with an old friend I hadn’t seen in several years. When I say ‘old’ friend she was actually much younger than me and during our few hours together I wondered if I had slept through some type of time-warped eclipse that seriously impacted generational behaviour. 

She had moved away some years ago to chase a career dream and set up home with her boyfriend who would soon become her husband. But the demands of city life had become too much for her self proclaimed ‘care-free spirit’, so the recent move back to the country and closer to her family seemed the obvious solution. Or maybe it was the easiest solution, and the one that allowed her to unapologetically live the life she felt was justified and that she was entitled to. More on that in a minute… 

We agreed to meet at a local park so the kids could play and run and burn some energy before we went for lunch. Great idea! How cute would this be? 3 little kids running around, arms outstretched pretending to be airplanes and asking me in their sweet little voices to push them on the swing.

I arrived slightly before her, and as the car she described in our messages turned into the park, I was excited to see her and the kids I had never met. It had been a long time and my memories were of her and I sharing a lot of jokes and laughter. Our catch up would be so wonderful.

Insert record scratch sound effect here!!!

Holy hell, was I wrong! I was certainly on some other kid-friendly planet while daydreaming about that. The doors flung open almost before the car had even stopped. 3 kids barrelled out and without caution or care, charged toward the playground. The two bigger ones (maybe 5 & 7) headed straight to the swings and proceeded to throw the little girl who was happily swinging and minding her own business, to the ground. She somehow picked herself up, without the swing, now loaded with one of the boys, hitting her in the head as she hastily made her escape crying her little heart out.

I just stood there with my mouth wide open, and the little girl’s mum wasn’t looking any better! I couldn’t believe what I just saw. As my old friend Amy (not her real name) waddled her way from the car to where I was standing, I noticed she was taking no notice of where her kids had gone. I greeted her with a long lost friend hug, then gently noted her boys had thrown a little girl off the swing. Her response - “oh well, she’ll get over it”.

Immediately my head was filled with conflicting thoughts of “do I just shut up as I don’t want to ruin this catch up, or do I say something that might cause a disagreement?”. Right or wrong, I chose to shut up.

We sat down to chat, and as we got further and further into conversation it became apparent that her disregard for others had become her lifestyle. She proudly stated several times that she doesn’t care what other people think of her, and how she has moved past people judging her, and that now she is living the carefree life and loving every moment of everything. 

Without knowing all the facts, I was fairly confident I was observing the expression of ‘I’ve been hurt badly and I’m going to do anything I can to keep people at arms length and I will behave any way I want, they can like it or lump it because I don’t want them near me anyway!’. So naturally my empathy took over and I ‘tolerated’ what I was hearing and seeing. Mind you I wasn’t so impressed with the older boy continually running past me, smacking me in the back of the head every single time!

She tried to sell her lifestyle as happy and carefree, and not entangled in all the drama that her other friends have to deal with. I wasn’t convinced, as there was a hint of resentment in her tone.

Then there it was - bamm!! The whole story about how her husband cheated on her with his accountant and how they were thieves and how she should have known he was an arse. The story finished with “but I couldn’t care less - good riddance to the idiot. My life is so great now and I can do whatever I like”.

Feeling slightly sorry for her, and at least having some understanding of the ‘everyone can get stuffed’ behaviour, I felt thankful I hadn’t given her a mouthful about the swing incident.

After a couple of hours (and for the record those kids did NOT drop to a lower level of energy) we went to a cafe for lunch. The kids were again ‘set free’ and annoyed the hell out of many people trying to enjoy a quiet lunch. I few times I dropped little comments like “I don’t think that lady over there likes the kids under her table” and “Oh god I hope we don’t get kicked out” and “We can just grab fish ’n chips and take them back to the park maybe?”. But all to no avail. She would either just laugh or make a dismissive comment along the lines of “who cares”. 

She made it clear that she believes it’s a free world and people can go and eat somewhere else if they don’t like the way her kids are behaving. I was literally stuck - I didn’t want to spend these few hours in a full on debate about how to be respectful. I didn’t know her full story, I didn’t know if the kids had autism or ADHD or anything else that could be contributing. I felt I wasn’t in a position to speak up, but minute by minute I was becoming more and more conflicted and churned up inside, and down right peeved off.

Amy told me about how her car had broken down and the nice car she was driving was actually her mum’s. She commandeered it 3 weeks ago, and despite her mum now being left without a car, she had no intention of returning it just yet as she couldn’t afford to get hers fixed. This comment came only minutes after telling me that she had just been to a concert with front row tickets. 

Actually that’s a lie, her tickets were several rows back on the floor but thanks to her new found confidence and attitude, she had taken herself to the front once the concert started, with no qualms about standing in front of others who had paid a premium price. Regardless, if you can afford concert tickets you can do something toward helping your mum get her car back. I became quite annoyed at this.

Then she proceeded to tell me she was going clothes shopping that afternoon but felt a bit guilty because she was supposed to be taking care of her sister’s dog while she was away for a week. Never mind, the dog would only miss food for one day. What the hell??!!

When our food arrived, she asked the kids to sit down and eat their lunch. Now let’s be clear about something here - she ASKED the kids if they would mind sitting. Maybe I’m a little old school when I take kids out for lunch, but I expect kids to behave in public. I don’t mean that they can’t speak, or play, or have fun like all kids should - I simply mean to have good manners and show respect for others. Inconsiderate behaviour is not my favourite thing.

So the next 5 minutes went like this:

Amy: Braydon, would you like to do a favour for mummy and sit down and eat your lunch?

Braydon: ignore mum

Amy: Braydon, mummy would like you to be a good boy

Braydon: ignore mum

Amy: Bray Bray, mummy’s going to cry if you make her sad

Braydon: ignore mum

Amy: Oh well, I tried

Kerryn: (in my mind) no you didn’t…

This exact thing was then repeated with the next child and again to no avail. At least the littlest one seemed hungry enough to run to the table to eat, but not before screaming past an elderly man and whacking him on the back as she flew past.

Oh, the other two did come to get their lunch, but in bursts, grabbing handfuls as they ran past doing laps of the cafe.

Finally I did speak up. I couldn’t stand it anymore. But only after one of the kids broke my golden rule - he stuck his finger in the sauce on my plate! That was it for me and my blood boiled over and started seeping out of my mouth.

“You know” I said. “I think you should put more effort into being a better role model for your kids. I can see you’re hurting or at least that you feel you have suffered some injustices, but I think the kids need to see your strength more than your weakness, and they certainly need clear boundaries to become happy functioning adults.”

OK, so that didn’t go down so well, and she certainly wasn’t impressed that I was ‘judging’ her, despite the fact that she told me earlier in the day that she has ‘moved past people judging her’. Hmmm…

Very abruptly she noted it was time to go as she had to do other things, and off she went in mum’s new shiny car…

I’m glad I chose to shut up at the park, because by waiting I now had a whole list of evidence that at least made me feel my case was valid. Had I spoken up right at the start, no doubt she would have completely dismissed my comments, and me, and the whole thing would have been lose/lose. I still don’t know if she’ll ever re-think how she is behaving, but at least she now has my words in her head.

By the way, I know she won’t be reading this as she ‘has no time for that rubbish!’. Don’t worry, I heard several times during our get together that I was ‘mad’, ‘crazy’, ‘ridiculous’, and many more things that may leave some feeling rather fragile. I was left thinking "wow if I didn't have the self-love and self-esteem that I do have, she may well have sent me down the big black hole of doubt, and I may never have come out!"

Which is the perfect segue to my point - careless is not the same as carefree, and a supposed carefree life does not give you the right to carelessly trash other people. It’s actually reckless. You can’t impact others or dismiss or disregard or be inconsiderate or disrespectful toward others, simply to fulfill your mission of being your definition of ‘carefree’.

The definition of ‘carefree’ claims to be ‘free from anxiety or responsibility’. The anxiety part is great, but as an adult there are responsibilities that just are. You can’t avoid them. 

However, you can avoid getting tangled up in other people’s drama, and you can avoid being persuaded by the negative opinions of others. You can also become so self-empowered that you are able to make choices and live a relatively carefree life, without impacting others. Particularly not oozing your carelessness all over the place and causing grief to others.

Behaving like an ‘oozer’ doesn’t make you cool, it makes you an inconsiderate prick that strong people (people who would normally be great to hang with), will do anything to avoid. It’s so easy to be kind, considerate, responsible and respectful, while at the same time being empowered enough to live a life as close as possible to how you want it to be. Call it ‘carefree’ if you will.

Despite me touting this as the empowered one, somehow I must have allowed Amy to ‘ooze’ into my sub-conscious because that night I had a dream about needing to go to the toilet. Beside the toilet was an over-flow bucket because sometimes the toilet didn’t flush. But no, in my dream Amy brazenly came up and let it go in the over-flow bucket. I told her she shouldn’t use that and she said “I couldn’t care less” and disappeared from view. 

So she did manage to infiltrate my mind, but thankfully I woke up very soon after and avoided literally using the dysfunctional ‘dream’ toilet. I’m sure I’m not the only one who is confronted with dodgy toilets in their dreams!

Kerryn Vaughan is the author of ‘Magnificent Kids!’ and ‘Get Off The Bench!’, founder of One Planet Classrooms, co-founder of Girls With Hammers, and host of Get Off The Bench Podcast