Often I talk about the challenges of special needs parenting, the isolation, the anxiety, the exhaustion. Today though, I wanted to reflect on one of the really positive aspects of our journey. Through my children and because of my children I have learned how to advocate. I am my children's protector, their guardian, their voice when they can not speak for themselves. I have been forced to find my voice and to become confident in it. It definitely took me a while but I've become pretty great at advocating for my children, my struggle now is to advocate for myself. I've never really been great at sticking up for myself. I hate confrontation, I am fairly timid, and I am the absolute definition of an introvert.
Today I found my voice. Today I stood up for myself. Not just once but twice! The first was not too difficult and just kind of naturally happened. It was through an email exchange, the other party made a mistake and was trying to charge me and extra fee. I pointed it out to them and their answer was to reimburse half of the extra fee. I found this unacceptable and told them so. I took me about half an hour of writing and rewriting the same email but I sent it in the end. The best part... they listened to me! The apologized and refunded me the full amount as should have happened in the first place. I was proud of myself and felt a surge of new found confidence.
It wasn't long after that the next opportunity to exercise my new found superpower came to pass. I was out shopping at the second hand store with my little's and my cousin. We managed a great haul and were very excited about our new treasures as we pulled into the check out line. The cashier started ringing through my purchase and quickly ran into a problem. The transformer dress up costume I had found for Isaac was not ringing through correctly. It was priced at $7.99 and the cashier was insisting this was some mistake and it should have been $34.99. I told her that was a ridiculous price for a second hand costume and I thought she was incorrect as the new version of this costume they also carried was the $34.99 one. She called over the supervisor to correct the price to the $34.99 on her till. I asked the supervisor to stop and double check this as I was sure the costume I had picked was the previous year's model. The supervisor argued with me and punched in the "correct" price. At this point I all out demanded they double check this. They finally argued with some huffy sighs and eye rolls. I also pointed out while we were waiting that they are the ones that had mistakenly priced the item and the scanning code of practice would disagree with what they were trying to do. To be clear it wasn't the sticker type of price tag that someone could have swapped it was the type they have to use a gun to attach to the costume. This costume was also missing the mask so there was no way it was a new costume (we already had the mask at home from a garage sale).
After several minutes of this supervisor and cashier berating me telling me how I was completely in the wrong and causing them extra work as well as holding up the line for other customers the girl who had been sent to check things out came back. She confirmed that it was in fact missing the mask and was last years costume. The supervisor let out the longest most begrudged sigh I have ever heard. She didn't even address me at this point simply muttered to the cashier and left. The cashier turned to me and said, "We will give you the $7.99 price." I replied with a polite thank you and finished my transaction.
After we left the store I was literally shaking and had to seriously calm down by rehashing the situation over and over with my cousin. She was probably ready to tape my mouth shut so she didn't have to hear anymore about it. Thanks Amy, I love you! It took about an hour but I finally calmed myself down enough that I started to feel good about standing up for myself.
And on that note, that is enough people for me today. Time to go crawl into my blanket fort with the kids and watch Toy Story.
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