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Who needs a shopping list when you’ve a six-year old TV freak?
Last Friday solidified my theory that kids should in fact be hired by PR companies to promote products.
Picture it. Superquinn. Friday evening. Legging around the shop with five minutes to go before closing. I’m in the household aisle buying toilet rolls. Suddenly, from behind me, a woman shrieks, “What’s that kid doing climbing up the shelves?”
Bad parenting, I think smugly. No point in bringing children into shops if they can’t be controlled.
Then; “Mammy! Get this toilet paper, it’s better.” My six-year-old is hanging by one arm from the aforementioned shelf. In his hand an alternative toilet paper to the greaseproof-paper I usually buy. I abandon my trolley and rush to save him from crashing to the floor.
“Shelves are not for climbing on,” I say, totally mortified that everyone’s attention has been drawn to the crappy (if you’ll excuse the pun) brand of loo-paper in my trolley. “Now put that back.”
“That’s good toilet paper,” he announces loudly to anyone close enough to listen. “It’s twice as big and it gives you a fresh clean feeling.”
People laugh.
“It does,” he says stubbornly, disgusted at the reaction this bit of information has generated. “It says so on the ad.”
Now I’m not an easy touch but sometimes for the sake of peace, I’ll do anything. So I bought the fresh clean feeling toilet paper. It wasn’t all I bought for the sake of peace that night. I was introduced to the brilliant household cleaner that “won’t leave a powdery residue.” Tea, that, he assured me, “would turn any moment golden and we’d be rich.” The ‘real appealable cheese’, the ‘you just can’t help yourself’ homefries and, as for the ‘tasty stuff that kids go for’ he almost wet himself with excitement when he saw that going into the trolley.
And then it was out to put the messages into the car. A car he didn’t want me to buy because it wasn’t the best built car in the world.
And most sinister of all, his treat for walking around the shop with me was a mars bar. But he was going to save it for later. “When I’m sitting on the sofa at home, Mammy.”
Anyone interested in hiring him?