Famous - Or - Three Times I Did You Wrong

The First Time

It was a not-so lovely wet and rainy day, when it first happened.

I was spending my day in the city with my son Conrad. It had been a long day and Conrad was getting whiny and when we stopped at a coffee shop, it only started to get worse.

"I want to eat that, Mommy!" He whined, pointing at a large doughnut with white chocolate chips inside the glass counter.

"You have already had lunch," I told him, "and if you eat that now you won't be able to eat anything else for dinner. You'll be too full."

"But I want to eat it!" He persisted. I was getting annoyed.

"I said no, "I repeated.

"Yes! I want to!" Conrad pulled at my hand.

"No!" I said, exasperated. I looked up. We had reached the counter.

"How can I help you, Ma'am?" the man behind the counter asked.

My first mistake: I turned away from Conrad to answer him. The first second, I didn't give Conrad my full attention, he yanked my hand as hard as he could which caused me to lose my balance and crash into a display of postcards.

My second mistake: I was so in rage that I wheeled around and slapped Conrad on the cheek. A camera clicked, a light flashed and Conrad began to wail loudly.

Alarmed, I spun around, only to see a teenage girl, at maybe fourteen years old, taking pictures of me with her camera. Panicking, I scooped Conrad up under my arm and ran out of the shop.

After I had brought some distance between me and that girl, I stopped in my tracks and took a few deep breaths, then I looked down at Conrad. He was crying. I kneeled down to him.

"I am sorry, darling," I told him, "I didn't mean it. I was in the heat of the moment. It won't ever happen again."

"Okay," he sniffed. Then he turned away. "Mommy? Do you still love me?"

I sighed. "Of course I do, Darling."

"Okay. Can we go home now?"

"Yes. We can." And so we did.

***

That night I lay awake. My husband was already sleeping peacefully but I couldn't seem to find rest. I regretted having slapped Conrad and worse, I also couldn't stop thinking about that girl.

Would she sell the pictures? Would they be on the front pages of every tabloid magazine by tomorrow? Or did she just take that picture for herself? But even if she did, why did she take it at that exact moment? In the end, she was just another teenage girl, right? She wouldn't be so vicious and earn money with embarrassing celebrities, would she?

In the end, she wouldn't be able to do me any harm, I convinced myself. Everything would end up being fine. Conrad would forget that that even happened, and nothing would happen with the photo that she took of me.

Hopefully.

***

My hopes were crushed the next morning by a very early phone call from my manager, Kyle. "Taneesha!" he said breathlessly, "Have you seen the headlines?"

"Uh, no?" I said, still a bit tired, and not knowing why the hell he was calling me at 6 am in the morning.

Kyle sighed. "I'm gonna read them out loud to you. >> Model Taneesha Fraeling – a child abuser? Friends of the family express concern about the well-being of her son Conrad << with a picture of you – apparently – slapping Conrad?"

Suddenly I was wide awake. "What?!"

"Mh," my manager confirmed. "Taneesha? Did you really slap Conrad?"

I bit on my lip. Should I tell him? After all, he was a good friend and from what I assumed the picture was making it pretty obvious that I was actually the one slapping him.

"Yes," I admitted quietly, "Yes, I did. And I regret it. But that doesn't really change the fact that these pictures exist and that people are gonna assume I'm a child abuser."

Kyle inhaled sharply. "Well," he said, and I could tell, he was judging me, "That doesn't matter now, does it? All that matters now, is damage control. The only thing that is going to convince people otherwise is you actively showing the opposite of what is shown in the picture.

I would suggest you, your husband and Conrad come to an arranged photoshoot to generate the picture of a happy family. You can go to a restaurant and spoil him or something like that. I'll text you the details, once I've found a good photographer."

I gulped. "Okay," I whispered. "Bye."

"Bye, Taneesha," Kyle said with a sigh, "And don't ever do such a thing again."

"I won't," I promised.