Category Archives: humor

September 20, 2007 · 12:15 am

The Fire Drill

Snags has a mortal fear of fire drills. It all started when he was in daycare, somewhere between the ages of two and two and a half, when another child pulled the fire alarm. I imagine the sudden loud noise of the clanging alarm frightened him the first time he heard it. When we picked him up from daycare the afternoon this all happened, Snags said, “A baby pulled the fire alarm!”

That of course, seemed impossible. I mean, how could it be? A baby? Pulled the fire alarm? Babies aren’t tall, they can’t reach the average fire alarm, can they? But we quickly learned that Snags was right. It turned out that Megan, a little girl at the school, was in her teacher’s arms as the teacher stood in the hallway near a fire alarm. Megan, curious babe she was, reached out to the shiny red fire alarm handle and gave it a yank, thus setting off the blaring tones of the alarm, and requiring the entire population of the daycare center to evacuate the building.

Three, almost four years later and Snags has never forgotten this. He has also never forgiven Megan this one transgression for the fear it instilled inside him. And over the years this fear… snowballed, more or less.

The preschool that Snags attended insisted that children keep their shoes on during the day, and the teachers imparted the logic that “You need to keep your shoes on in case there is a fire drill!” to the children to teach them this. I assume they said this because if there was a fire, or even just a drill, that they’d waste precious time putting shoes on 10 or 20 children that had been running around without shoes. Evacuating the building without shoes could be a danger. We wouldn’t want these barefoot raggamuffins to cut their foot on a pebble in the parking lot, right?

And yet somehow, in all of that “keep your shoes on” harping, Snags got it twisted in his head that taking shoes off CAUSED the fire alarm to sound. Shoes on and all was golden. The days were quiet and calm. Shoes off and all would be chaos and the screeching alarm would pierce eardrums and turn children into stone. Or at least that’s how I imagine Snags had made the connection of in his mind. Because once, we were at the mall and Snags saw people trying on shoes. He was half way to the exit door before I caught up with him. “Let’s go! Now!” He cried. “The fire alarm’s going to go off!” I couldn’t convince him otherwise. Nothing I said quelled his fears. He started to cry and shake in fear and as the tears began to roll down his face like a sheet of water over Niagra Falls, I conceded that it might indeed be best if we cut our shopping trip short and left the mall as quickly as we could.

When Snags was three a new student started at his school, and was placed in Snag’s classroom. The child had some discipline problems in that he did exactly everything he was told not to do. Also, he was fond of taking off all his clothes any time he felt like it, which seemed to be approximately every five minutes, or three seconds after the teachers had dragged him out from under the craft table and got him dressed again. And of course, as part of all of this, he took his shoes off.

The teachers admitted that this new child was a challenge, and that he was a disruption to the class and that he upset ALL the other children. EVERY. DAY. It seemed there was nothing they could do about this except wrestle the naked problem child to the ground and forcefully put his clothes back on him. Snags began to dislike school. He’d cry in the mornings that he didn’t want to go to school. It wasn’t fun. Jeremy wouldn’t keep his clothes on… Then one day, Snags’ teacher came to me and DEMANDED that I had to do something about Snags, because every time Jeremy took his shoes off, Snags started to panic and cry because he thought the fire alarm was going to go off, and his crying set the other children crying one by one, until the entire class was a roomful of wiggling, writhing, crying children that no amount of anything could calm.

I didn’t know what I could do. Really, it seemed to me, the teacher should be doing something about Jeremy the problem child who couldn’t or wouldn’t keep his clothes or his shoes on. I shouldn’t have to do anything about Snags for being scared. Besides, I’d already spoken to Snags about this. Ad nauseum. I’d explained that shoes, on or off, were not the switch that controlled the fire alarms. In fact, I’d told him there was no connection there at all. But he insisted it was true. After all, the teachers told them this every day. Keep your shoes on in case there’s a fire drill. Only Snags heard “Keep your shoes on or there WILL BE a fire drill.”

Eventually, the problem child was removed from the school. This wasn’t my doing. One morning we just arrived to find that he wasn’t there, and then he wasn’t there the next day, or the day after that…. And then we learned that the school had asked the family to take the child elsewhere, he was simply too great a disruption, too great a discipline problem, and they couldn’t handle him, shoes or not.

That would seem to be the end of the story except Snags focused his energies on Megan, the child who had pulled the fire alarm that very first time. When she was a baby. She’d been moved up to his classroom, and sometimes at nap time the teachers would set up her cot on the floor directly underneath the fire alarm. Snags monitored this like you’d watch a poisonous snake circling around you. He asked the teachers to move Megan’s cot. “She might pull the fire alarm again,” he warned them.

Over time we got to the point where every morning Snags would demand that I ask the director of the preschool center “Is there going to be a fire drill today?” And every morning she’d say “No. No fire drill today.” This got tiring very fast. I was sick of asking the question and I know the director was tired of answering it. But if we didn’t dance the dance, Snags would be paralyzed with fear, right there in the middle of the hallway, unable to move unless he was promised there wouldn’t be a fire drill frightening him on THAT day.

So, after a few months of this, I got the bright idea to tell Snags that the computer where I signed him in in the mornings had a sentence there each day telling me if there was going to be a fire drill or not. So I’d log him in and say, “No fire drill today!” and he’d audibly breath a sigh of relief and relax a little. Sometimes he would even start to skip down the hallway.

The director of course, knew about Snags’ fear of fire drills. It had been born and bred in her center, after all. I’d asked her every day for months if there was going to be a fire drill. So eventually, when there WAS going to be a fire drill, she’d warn me ahead of time. “We’re having a fire drill tomorrow morning,” she’d say to me as I passed by her office on the way back to my car after depositing Snags safely in his classroom. “I’ll try to do it early, before you arrive.” And for the most part, this worked. I think we went almost 1 ½ years without Snags having to partake in a fire drill of any sort.

But then Kindergarten was upon us. The first day was a shortened day where the students met the teachers and the parents stayed to fill out paper work. We went to this shortened day and all was well. On the second morning, as we headed off to school, Snags told me that “At least they don’t have fire alarms in the classrooms!” It seems he’d scoped out the surroundings and noted that the alarm bells were outside the classroom doors. “Maybe if they have a fire drill it won’t be so loud” he said.

“Don’t worry, Snags!” I told him. There’s no way they’d have a fire drill on the 2nd day of school! That’d be crazy!” I scoffed. And as usual, I saw Snags relax a little.

But I was wrong…

When I picked Snags up from his after school care after his second day of school (his first FULL day of Kindergarten) he ran to me and said “I have something to tell you!”

“Okay, what is it?” I asked.

“Not until we’re in the car!” he said.

So we gathered his lunch box and his back pack and left for the car. Once he was strapped in his booster seat, I sat in the driver’s seat with the car door open and turned to him and said “So, what was it you wanted to tell me?” and he said through gritted teeth “Shut. The. Door!”

“Okay,” I sighed, beginning to worry what he could possibly have to tell me that was so secret the car door had to be shut.

I turned back to him. “Okay, what is it?”

“We. Had. A. Fire. Drill. Today!” He said.

I realized then it was highly unlikely that he would ever trust me again.

Then he went on to explain that during the morning announcements, right after they said The Pledge of Allegiance, the Principal announced that they would be having a fire drill.

“Where you scared?” I asked.

“YES!” Snags replied.

“Did you tell your teacher you were scared and what did she say?” I asked.

“She said it would be okay.” He said.

Snags told me how the class practiced lining up and going outside for the impending fire drill. In place of a real alarm, his teacher made a “beep beep” sound and when she did that, the class had to line up and evacuate to the playground. But they weren’t allowed to play. And then the teacher said the practice was over and they all got to go back inside the building.

Later in the afternoon the Principal came on the loudspeaker again. This time she was ready to actually have the fire drill. She gave the children a one-minute warning. I think they may have counted down. And then, right as the alarm was about to sound, Megan, Oh Megan the child who pulled the fire alarm when she was a baby, screamed “EVERYONE COVER YOUR EARS!”

So Snags was prepared. He knew the alarm was coming. He even knew when to cover his ears and line up and go outside.

He wasn’t THAT scared. He survived.

“But NEXT time,” he told me in a bit of a worried voice, “They aren’t going to WARN us! The Principal said this was the last warning and next time it will be a surprise fire drill!”

And I find it hard to reassure him. I can tell him not to worry. I can tell him it will be okay, because it’s true. I just can’t tell him it won’t be today. Or tomorrow…

***********************************************************

Author’s note: Snags’ elementary school had that “surprise” fire drill TODAY. Tonight, a child who looks like Snags and acts like Snags, but most certainly cannot BE Snags, said to me “I LIKE fire drills!” Upon further inquiry, the imposter child stated that his reason for liking fire drills is “…because we get to go outside!” and also because “…elementary school fire drills don’t frighten me as much as the ones at daycare did…”

And that’s the first step in denial and why I had to get the entire fire drill story down. Because one day, most probably in the near future, this kid of mine will swear he never had a fear of fire drills, that I didn’t spend an entire year asking the daycare center director on a daily basis if there was going to be a fire drill that day.

So whether Snags is 7 or 15, 23 or 30 when he denies this all ever happened, I can say “Oh yes it did! Here, read this. THIS is how it all went down!”

11 Comments

Filed under alarm, fear, fire drills, humor, life, shoes, Snags

September 14, 2007 · 12:09 am

The Bionic Woman

I’m off to the races this weekend. A foot race, that is. A ½ marathon. I’ve been training for it all summer long and it’s finally here. This isn’t my first ½ marathon, and it’s not even my second. I’ve done a few of them by now. My race this Sunday will be my second one this year and the one I’m running in October will be my third, again, for this year. But I’m not bragging, I swear. Bragging would be if I wore my finisher’s medal around my neck when I go to work on Monday. I won’t do that. Although… I might pass it around for people to look at.

While I’ve put in a lot a lot of time running this past year, I haven’t lost a single pound. In fact, somehow I’ve piled on all the pounds the rest of the world has lost. I’m some kind of pound magnet. Or maybe it’s all the chocolate I’ve been eating. Yeah, I suppose that could be it…

Or maybe it’s the chocolate combined with the fact that I’ve somehow managed to excuse myself from other forms of exercise on my days off from running. Yes, I am one those people who take days off from running. And not just when I’m sick. Some runners, I know, would say that I’m not a real runner if I take days off. I could argue the point but I won’t. I want to save my energy for this weekend.

I used to run an average of about 6 miles a day. Then I started getting some aches and pains and tired and bored, so I backed off a bit. Okay… a lot. Now I run 3 days a week. Two short runs of oh, three to five miles say, and one long run on the weekends. On the intervening days I should be doing some other form of exercise, cross training by walking or cycling, or even lifting weights, but I’ve gotten LAZY. That probably explains some of these extra pounds, too.

Despite my slothfulness, I want you all to know that I am still strong. Oh yes, I am. These arms may have flab hanging from them but they are powerful. Bionic powerful, I tell you. In fact, I may be the reason they have a remake of The Bionic Woman coming out on TV this fall. I know that when you think about The Bionic Woman you are most likely remembering the days of Lindsay Wagner and her portrayal of Jaime Sommers, but I’m pretty sure it’s because of me and the feat of strength I pulled off the several days ago that they are bringing the series back.

Last week there was a fire right outside of the parking garage that charges me $150.00 dollars too much per month to park my car there while I work. I didn’t actually witness the fire when it was in full blaze, but I came upon the aftermath, the burnt remains, when I made my way to the garage to retrieve my car and go home.

To enter the garage and get to your car you have to wave your parking ticket or monthly pass card in front of a magnetic card reader machine affixed to the brick façade of the parking garage. The machine then sends a signal to a lock on the door. You listen for a click and then pull the handle, open the door, and walk inside to the elevator.

On the day of the fire I walked up to find the card reader machine, which is made of metal and plastic, all sagging like the clocks in an M.C. Escher drawing. It looked, well, melted. I looked up and noticed that the awning above the door was half missing and the other half was hanging in tattered melted strips of nylon, like a shredded shower curtain. The glass around the door was cracked, the street was covered in ash 2 inches deep, and black streaks ran along the sidewalk.

I thought it was odd, that it looked as if a fire had blown by, but that seemed impossible. My office is right across the street. If there had been a fire surely I would have heard the fire trucks, seen the flames.

Since there was a man at the door with his hand already on the door handle, I passed the card reader machine without waving my parking pass at it. Another woman walked up, and the man gave one good strong yank, and the door, despite its magnetic lock, popped open. I remarked that it looked like there had been a fire and the man said there had been one. A generator mounted on a truck that was parked right alongside the garage entry had caught fire around noon he said. The flames, he told us, could be seen for several blocks. Somehow I had missed all of this.

But I learned my lesson. The card reader machine, all melted as it was, wasn’t working properly so it wasn’t going to open the door for me anymore. The following day, as I approached the door, the cracked glass had been repaired but the card reader was still sagging, the awning still missing. I had two choices. I could turn around walk down the street and around the corner then up the ramp that the cars use to enter and exit the garage, or I could yank on that door handle with all my might and pop the lock. I chose the latter.

As I grabbed the handle, a woman standing nearby said to me, “You can’t get in that way, it’s locked. You’ll have to go…” and I looked her in the eye, put my hand on the door handle, and yanked. With an audible snap, the door popped open. The woman’s eyes grew large, she took a few steps back, staring at me in shock and surprise, and I think, a little bit of fear.

I hope my legs are bionic at the race this weekend!

6 Comments

Filed under 1/2 marathon, bionic woman, exercise, fire, humor, life, running

September 12, 2007 · 12:01 am

Thank You, Randy Newman

I’m short. 5’3” short to be exact. Except when I wear heels and I can trick people into thinking I’m taller than I really am. My husband, he’s tall. Taller than me. Probably average tall for a guy. I can’t remember exactly how tall he is and so I can’t tell you here because you know how men are. If I get it wrong, especially if I err on the short side of his correct exact height, he’ll get all upset and I’ll have to come back and issue a correction. Something like Correction: For the record, my husband is X and 1/4” tall, not X and 1/8” tall as I had previously stated… And I’m so not in the mood for that. So let’s just say he’s a fair deal taller than I am and leave it at that.

For the most part, my height hasn’t been much of an issue. Well, except when I buy clothes and have to pay some highly talented seamstress to trim 3 feet of material off the bottom of my pants. Where ARE all these women who are eight feet tall anyway? I’ve never met any of them but when I shop most of the clothes seem to be made for them.

But this isn’t really about clothes. It’s about attitudes and it’s about music, because it made me think of the Short People song by Randy Newman. It’s about religion and gender (but only barely) and wondering what, exactly, got into my son. Really, it’s about the things kids say that make you go “hmmm…”

Because at breakfast this morning my son Snags said to me, completely out of the blue, “Ms. Trish is short, too!” Then he asked, “Are all women like that?”

I said no, some women are tall. Ms. Trish is one of his teachers, and while I haven’t actually measured her, if I had to guess, I’d say she’s about my height. I reminded Snags that his Aunt Viv is pretty tall. I pointed out that his cousin Christina, standing at her full height of young and strikingly beautiful and about 6 feet, is tall.

And he looked at me and said, rather pointedly, “Yeah, but she’s really skinny.”

A little later, as I buckled Snags into his booster seat in the back seat of the car, he stopped me so he could adjust his shorts. “Do you want my waist band to be higher than my belly button?” He demanded to know.

“Higher than your belly button? Sure. Doesn’t matter to me.” I replied, still stinging from the implied fat comment.

Then he made up a song and sang “Higher than the women were the lemon drops! Higher than everything were the clouds. The rain came down on all the women and the men hid inside their houses.”

Yeah, the men were probably watching football, or playing Xbox, I thought.

Then his song turned kind of dark…

“The men locked the doors so the women got soaking wet. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! HA!”

I don’t know why but I started getting irritated at his five year old callousness. I said “Hey, that’s not funny. That’s kind of mean. You shouldn’t make fun of women. If it weren’t for women, men wouldn’t even be here.”

He looked contemplative then asked “Why not?”

“Well,” I said, “Women are the ones who have all the babies. Girl babies AND boy babies. If there weren’t any women then there wouldn’t be any boy babies so they couldn’t grow into men.”

“Why can’t men have babies?” He asked.

“Because,” I said “God made it so only women could have babies.”

“God could do it!” He retorted. “God is really powerful, right? He could have babies himself or he could just make them.”

“Or,” he added after a short pause, “God could make men have the babies.”

“No,” I said, “That wouldn’t work. The men wouldn’t take care of the babies. They’d probably sit around playing video games all day, ignoring the babies when they cried and needed to be fed or have their diaper changed.”

“Yea-ah” agreed my son. “That’s why the women would take care of the babies. “Anyway,” he added, “You’ll understand one day when you’re as tall as dad.”

12 Comments

Filed under babies, God, height, humor, short, Snags, tall

September 10, 2007 · 12:07 am

Dance Party DJ

One of Snags’ recurring ideas is to hold a Dance Party. He usually begins planning the event upon waking in the morning. He must think about the party all through breakfast, because as soon as he downs that last bite of brown sugar Pop Tart, he springs from the table to begin gathering everything he’ll need.

His list of rockin’ party supplies generally includes an overturned laundry basket to serve as a convenient table, a CD player, at least one CD (you’ll be lucky if there are two), a couple of lights to throw various colors around the room, and some snacks.

Since he’s not allowed to plug anything in himself, I get recruited to help. I do so, but I admit it’s with a weary trepidation. I’ve been to these dance parties before you see. They aren’t well attended, and the night usually ends with the host in tears as I shoo him off to bed before the fun ever really starts.

Snags is, of course, the host of the dance party. He also controls the lighting, the music, and the snacks. The lights aren’t bad. His disco balls and stop lights throw multiple colors across the walls, almost like a real disco. If you close your eyes you can imagine that you aren’t in my family room; you can almost pretend you’re on a wide wooden dance floor and not surrounded by strewn toys, crayons, magic markers, or the oversized sofa.

The snacks are just so-so for a dance party. But if you favor graham crackers, fruit snacks, and apple juice, then you’re in luck.

The music, however, leaves something to be desired. Maybe it’s me. I admit I’m not a great dancer. I can’t keep a rhythm. Even so, it’s easier to dance to popular music: hip-hop, rock, disco, or dare I say it, even country. But try dancing to Barenaked Ladies as they sing “Oh Hanukkah Oh Hanukkah” over and over. Or “Baby Bumblebee” from Toddler’s Favorite Tunes. Whatever Snags’ favorite song du jour is, that’s what you’ll listen to non-stop until your head explodes or you trip over an errant tinker toy and have to retreat to the sidelines with an ice pack planted on your ankle.

Fairly soon after that the dance party will end. I’ll declare it’s bedtime, and the Dance Party DJ will cry in protest as I begin to turn off disco balls and unplug the CD player.
But don’t worry, there’s always another dance party being planned. Be sure to check your mailbox, your invitation should arrive any day now.

5 Comments

Filed under dancing, disco balls, DJ, humor, life, party, Snags

September 3, 2007 · 10:15 am

This Thing Called Kindergarten

And here we are. The first week of Kindergarten has drawn to a close and the second week is about to start. Snags seems to be enjoying his new elementary school and his life as a Kindergarten student. It’s different than preschool in a number of ways, but one difference in particular has Snags especially impressed. Witness the conversation we had at breakfast this morning:

Snags: “Know what I’m surprised about in elementary school? That the toilet paper dispenser, if you’re running out of toilet paper, will just drop down a new roll that was up there, already unwrapped, that nobody’s used before!”

Me: “It wasn’t like that at preschool?”

Snags: “No.”

Me: “What did you do if you ran out of toilet paper at preschool?”

Snags: “Called the teacher. And you know what they gave you? Tissues!” (and here you should note that the word “Tissues!” is said with disdain).

In the evenings, my husband and I ask Snags about his day while we all eat dinner together. Over the past week, we’ve interrogated Snags enough to find out that the Kindergarteners practiced what to do for a fire drill. They had a fire drill. They drew pictures. They participated in a scavenger hunt. They played a copy cat game.

Snags offered to teach me a new song he had learned in music class, but he claimed to need “those little Hawaiian drums that are stuck together” to do so. “Bongos?” I inquired. But he didn’t know what they were called. Whatever they are, we don’t have any, so he retracted his offer. I’m a little sad that he refuses to sing me the song until I get a hold of the proper kind of drums. But in the back of my mind I wonder if this isn’t all just a ploy on his part to get me to buy him some drums.

In gym class they tossed beanbags in the air, “no higher than your nose or they’d blow the whistle at you.” And finally, Snags walked another child to the nurse’s office. “Why?” I asked. “What happened? Why did he need to go to the nurse?” I don’t know,” Snags said. “I think his lip was bleeding.” I’m still not clear if this incident was in any way related to the beanbag tossing.

Who do you sit with at lunch?” I asked one evening.

“My friends,” Snags replied.

“Yes,” I said. “But what are their names?”

“I don’t know.” He said with a shrug. “I have to ask them.”

And later:

“Who did you play with on the playground?” I asked. But Snags wasn’t telling. “James?” I prodded. “Did you play with James?” Finally, he said yes, he had played with James. “And guess who I saw?” He demanded. “Who?” I asked. “Megan? No? Okay, Andrew!” I guessed. But no. It wasn’t Andrew. I couldn’t think of any other neighborhood children he might have seen on the playground. But I didn’t have to keep guessing for long…

“I saw three bounty hunters, two people from the dark side, and a person with 100 light sabers!” Snags proclaimed.

And that’s when I choked on my mac-n-cheese.

This school… I don’t know. I thought it was a good place, but bounty hunters on the playground? Here? In suburbia?

Still, I was feeling pretty proud of Snags, so I thought it would be nice if, to celebrate the end of a successful first week of school, I made his favorite dinner of barbeque brisket and gave him a small gift.

I settled on buying him a Star Wars action figure. He was happy with the special dinner and even more delighted with his gift, but the delight soon turned into something else altogether. Because before I knew it, he was arguing with me. Snags wanted to use the action figure to build a Star Wars model. And not only that, he wanted the model to be permanent, the figure forever frozen in place with glue!

His model parts included a toy bug habitat that he had busted the insides out of, and his brand new Boba Fet action figure. Only Snags calls him Bobo Fat, like he’s some kind of overweight circus clown. But I wasn’t agreeable to letting Boba Fet, only 3 days old in our house now, get ruined by a five year old with a bottle of Elmer’s.

Eventually Snags dropped his insistence on the need for glue and decided that tape! Scotch tape! Could be used to secure “Bobo Fat” into his model like he wanted. I consented to the tape, since it’s a much less permanent method, and I handed over the dispenser. I watched for a while as Snags proceeded to cover up all of the vent holes on top of the bug habitat.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m killing him!” Snags said.

“What?!” I shrieked, horrified. “Don’t talk like that!” I said. “That’s not nice at all.”

“I have to kill him,” he replied calmly. “He tried to kill Luke! I have to cover up all the air holes so he can’t breathe and he’ll die.”

I looked at my husband. What should we do? I pleaded with my eyes. Who should we call? The police? A shrink? I don’t think this is right, I tried to say.

But my husband, nonplussed about it all, just shrugged.

So I gave in. “Fine!” I said. “But don’t use all the tape trying to kill something that’s not even alive in the first place,” I added. And then I left the room. I could hear Snags’ laughter in the background.

Later, Snags brought his Star Wars model to me. It was all sealed up with every possible crack covered. Entrapped in the model without air Bobo Fat doesn’t stand a chance. And since there’s no way to slip him any food, Bobo Fat might lose a bit of weight in there too. I’ll check after Snags get’s home from Kindergarten tomorrow.

5 Comments

Filed under Boba Fet, humor, Kindergarten, life, Snags, Star Wars

August 30, 2007 · 10:14 am

Chinese Takeout

I’m really aggravated. I ordered Chinese takeout for dinner, okay? I called the place and asked for a large order of Roast Pork LoMein, a large order of General Tso’s Chicken, and a large order of the Chef’s Special: Crispy Beef. I ordered the beef because it was the Chef’s Special, so:

a. it had to be good, right? and
b. the menu said it had carrots in it and that could count as my vegetable

Phone order-taker man said it would be 20 minutes. To be fair, since it was approaching dinner time, I gave them an extra five minutes beyond the time they quoted me to get my food together before I went to pick it up.

But when I got there, it wasn’t ready. I was directed to grab a chair for a while. I sat and waited while they seemingly caught the chicken, cut its head off, plucked the feathers out of it, cut it up, and deep fried it and poured General Tso’s secret sauce all over it.

FINALLY they brought out my order.

As the order delivery lady handed it over to me she said something in Chinese that I didn’t quite catch. I was going to say “What?” but then didn’t because I remembered that except for take out menu, I don’t speak Chinese anyway, so it wouldn’t have mattered.

When I got home and unpacked the sack of food, I got a surprise: two egg rolls that I hadn’t asked for. I deduced then (because I’m smart that way) that the order delivery lady had probably said to me, “Thank you for your patience. You waited longer than it took us to build the Great Wall and so I hope you’ll accept my offering of two free egg rolls.” I mean, I’m not exactly sure that’s what she had said, but I wasn’t about to drive back over there and return the egg rolls, so we ate them.

The egg rolls were good, but the Chef’s Special was not special at all. Not even close. In fact, I suggest you skip it.

The sack of food also contained 6 bags of Chinese noodles. The fried kind they’d put in a bowl on your table if you were sitting at a restaurant. The equivalent, I think, of a basket of corn chips on your table when you go to Don Pablos. Then there were about 12 fortune cookies in the bag.

I wondered what they were thinking. I mean, people! Come on! I only ordered three entrees. Why do I need 6 bags of noodles and 12 fortune cookies? Then I started to think that maybe they were trying to tell me something. Perhaps three large orders of food are supposed to feed more than 3 people? Well, no matter, we could each have four fortune cookies for dessert.

But here’s the part that pisses me off the most. They gave me the WRONG fortune cookies. They gave me someone else’s fortune cookies! No wonder there were so damn many of them.

How do I know they weren’t MY fortune cookies? I opened them all. I read the fortunes. Check these out:

The only rose without a thorn is friendship. What is THAT supposed to mean? Whose stupid fortune is that? Not mine.

Keep your feet on the ground even though friends flatter you. What friends are flattering me? Where are they doing this? Behind my back?

You love sports, horses and gambling but not to excess. Okay. Wrong, wrong, and wrong again. I don’t love sports unless roller skating counts. Does roller skating count? Not the roller blade kind. The old fashioned kind where you have 4 wheels underfoot and are much more stable and the disco lights are going and you skate round and around to the beat of the music until they call “couples only.” Plus, I hate horses. I’m sorry, but it’s true. I was never fond of horses as a child, even though all girls are supposed to be in love with them. Sorry Black Beauty. Plus, once when I was in high school I had this boyfriend who took me horse back riding and the horse slipped on a patch of ice on a hill and we were thrown to the ground and the horse fell and my stupid boyfriend worried more about the horse’s leg and if it was hurt than he did about me, and it wasn’t even his horse! And finally, gambling? Come on! Okay, I do sometimes buy a lottery ticket, but only when the jackpot is REALLY, REALLY big so millions of others are buying tickets too and they ruin my chances of winning. Like I said, this one, definitely NOT mine.

But wait. It gets better. Immediately after I opened the one about horses and gambling I opened:

What’s vice today may be virtue tomorrow. Seriously. Look, I have it right here.

I couldn’t stop there though. There were two more cookies left and I had to see if one of them was actually meant for me.

You have an important new business development shaping up. Well, that’s totally news to me. So I think it’s not mine.

And after that:
You will have good luck and overcome many hardships. Does that mean hardships in the new business? And if so, what is it? So again, not my fortune!

I went through all twelve cookies and am feeling terribly full now only to be disappointed.

I decided I wasn’t going to stand for this so I drove over to the take out place again and told them my problem. There was a lot of fist pumping and pointing and raised voices as they argued with me. They said I couldn’t prove I got those fortunes from their cookies. They said maybe I got them from Wong’s down the road. I got mad and stormed out and all the workers yelled after me in Chinese as I headed out the door. I don’t know what they said. It was probably an apology but I’m going to have to learn to speak Chinese beyond the menu dialect if I’m going to be able to figure it out.

8 Comments

Filed under Chinese food, fortune cookies, humor

August 28, 2007 · 12:17 am

Backseat Driver

My husband and I are both Geographers. By schooling and by hobby. We both have undergraduate and graduate degrees in Geography. We like maps, especially old maps, and we have framed maps hanging on many of the walls in our home. We have more than one globe, and issues of National Geographic abound. We have road atlases in our car, and folded up maps in the glove compartment. And the irony of this is that none of those things, of course, ever stop us from getting lost.

And our son seems to be following, to some degree, in our footsteps. Or in this case, our tire tracks…

You see, I was driving Snags to preschool one recent morning when he pulled one of our many road atlases out from the door compartment in the car where we store them. From his position in the backseat of the car he asked, “Mom, what does ‘S’ stand for?” I had to think about this for a moment. Then I realized that he must be looking at the north arrow in the atlas so I responded, “Um…South.” To which my backseat driver announced, “Okay. We’re going to go south out of the garage and down the driveway. Then we are going to turn west up the street.”

And now you must be wondering, if I just taught him ‘S’ stood for south, where did he learn about west? Well, from Curtis, Kimee, Karla, Shaun, and Jenn on Hi-5, of course! You don’t think professional geographers like my husband and I would teach this kind stuff to a child do you? Because we didn’t. We don’t have the time. North, south, east and west are on a whole other directional plane from “Go UP to your room!” or “Sit DOWN, you know better than to stand on the table!”

Anyway, think about this… Snags was holding that atlas flat on his lap. In that position, the north arrow on the page would point straight ahead and north would always be in front of us. If we back up, go in reverse to get out of the garage and down the driveway, we must be headed south. Because as he sees it, the north arrow is pointing forward, and south is pointing behind us.

And so naturally, if we turn left off of our street we will be heading west, and conversely, if we turn right, we’ll be headed east. And mostly this is correct. But kids don’t understand that you need to take into account your current position when you are reading a map, and THAT makes all the difference.

As I continued driving toward preschool my son announced, roughly every 7 seconds, that we were “…going north… still going north… still going north… still. going. north. Still going north, mom…”

I found myself driving a little faster, trying to get to the place where we had to turn. Because, I figured, at least then he could stop saying “still going north…”

I mean, I felt like I was stuck in that orange-banana knock knock joke. You know it right?

Knock. Knock.
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?
Knock. Knock.
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?
Knock. Knock.
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?

And just when you are about to take out your own eardrums with the stiff end of a banana peel after saying “Banana who?” for the 432nd time, the joke changes and they say “Orange” and you say, “Orange who?” and the joke teller says: “Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?” Yes, I know… Ha. Ha. Very funny. Not.

Finally, we had a turn approaching and the voice from the back seat declared “We’re going to turn east.” I thought then I would just test my theory about my son’s directional competency and so I asked him, “How do you know that?” and he replied, pointing out the window, “Because my school is over there; see EAST!”

“Okay,” I said. “Is that right or left?” I asked him.

“Right!” he said. And he was correct, he was pointing to the right.

Except… right wasn’t east. On that point he was wrong. And backing down our driveway isn’t south. But he’s only 5. I think this method of learning about direction is just fine for right now. My husband tends to disagree and thinks I should correct Snags, tell him the actual direction we are traveling. But understanding that takes more skill than I think a five year old possesses. It requires the ability to read a map for one. It requires the ability to READ as another.

Besides, even possessing those very important skills of literacy and map reading, my husband still manages to get us lost when he’s driving somewhere.

So for now anyway, I’m content to keep on heading north. You know, as long as I can turn once in a while.

6 Comments

Filed under direction, driving, geography, humor, life, maps

August 26, 2007 · 12:39 am

Little Slice of Hell

So here’s a little slice of hell. Our air conditioner is broken down and it’s 98’ out with a heat index of 105’. Minus the visible flames licking at my heels, I’m sure this is the full on heat of hell and I vow here on out to live a better life if only to avoid having to spend eternity in that great inferno. I mean, I’ve only been dripping sweat miserable in this for about a day, but I already can’t stand it.

My husband discovered the problem with our air conditioner late yesterday afternoon. I guess he thought the house felt too warm and he went outside to check the unit. He came back in saying the little red light was on indicating that the power company had assumed control of the unit, cycling it off to conserve energy in a period of peak demand. But that didn’t sound right to me. Peak demand? Up until about 3:00 yesterday afternoon we’d had rain and clouds for an entire week. Temperatures most days hadn’t made their way out of the 60s. So how there could be such a huge demand causing the electric company to turn off our air conditioner was beyond me. I could understand if temperatures had been high for days on end, but not when they’d only been elevated for some three hours.

I urged my husband to call the power company. He did and came back to report that they had not, in fact, turned anyone’s AC unit off, not even ours. And they were not experiencing a peak demand.

So it was our problem. The utility company wouldn’t be turning our AC back on because they weren’t the ones who had turned it off. Next, my husband shut the whole unit off and then back on from the thermostat inside the house. Maybe it would work then, like how you sometimes have to shut the #%$&%@! computer off and turn it back on again to get it to work right.

But that didn’t help at all. My husband came back in and shut the AC down for the evening. He said that when he’d restarted it, the unit outside was making a horrible grinding noise and it was blowing hot air from its sides. Worried it would get hotter and hotter and hotter until it would self combust, we had to leave it off. He called the service company who said they would come out and take a look sometime after noon today. When it’s supposed to be even hotter outside. The thought alone was enough to get me all hot and bothered. But not in an Ellen Barkin – Dennis Quaid Big Easy kind of way. More like a red faced and sweaty after a 13 mile run, and pissed off that the air conditioner isn’t working bothered kind of way. Not sexy at all, that.

As the sun set, we opened windows around the house. A hot breeze, we thought, might be better than no breeze at all. No? I’d say it was a draw except for the animal outside that was croaking-chirping in the backyard. Was it a frog? Was it a bird? It wasn’t Superman, that’s for sure. Whatever it was, it croak-chirped outside the bedroom window all night long while the ceiling fan swirled hot and humid air around the room. I imagined this must be what it feels like to sleep in a rain forest. The carpeting in our hallway felt damp.

The service guy showed up at 4:00 in the afternoon today and determined that our air conditioner’s fan had burnt up. As luck would have it, he doesn’t carry fans on his truck. He also declined to rig up our table top fan to work the AC for us. I thought that would be a good stop-gap measure but apparently service guy is just a mean and lazy bastard. He insisted that he has to order the part and it should be in Monday, maybe Tuesday. Which means they can install it on Tuesday, maybe Wednesday.

Now we’ve got the shades drawn, the lights off, and fans circulating wherever we can. We’ve spent the better part of the day in the basement where it’s at least 5 degrees cooler than anywhere else in the house. But I’m not sure how much longer we can stay here. The chocolate in my cupboards is melting, which means it’s officially time to do something. First, I think I’ll eat the chocolate. Then, I think I’ll take a look at the list I made last night. The list of places I know of that do have air conditioning: the mall, the bookstore, the frozen food section of the grocery store, the video arcade, the movie theater, friends and relative’s houses, the interior of my car until it runs out of gas… We might pack up and go to one of them. Any place cooler than this house will be a little slice of Heaven.

6 Comments

Filed under air conditioner, heat, hell, hot, humor, life

August 24, 2007 · 12:09 am

Glad I Could Be of Service

I don’t know how many people realize this, but my little blog here, like nearly all blogs, I suspect, has something called a “dashboard.” It’s a behind-the-scenes tool through which I manage this place. It’s through the dashboard that I access my page and write my posts and respond to comments.

And like the dashboard in a car, my blog’s dashboard has some instruments that give me feed back. I have stats! About my blog! Almost as if I had a crystal ball, I can tell how many people visited my blog on any particular day, and I can see what site referred them to me, meaning, where someone clicked on a link that brought them here.

But no need to panic. My dashboard is a bit dusty, my crystal ball a bit murky. I can’t tell who exactly these people are. I can only get a general idea. In other words, it’s like walking around without my glasses. I can tell it’s a body, I just can’t make out the faces or read the name tags.

I can, however, tell you that over a 30 day period the following posts here were the most popular: The Unfunny Files led the group and Okay Listen Up came in second place. That means these two particular posts were viewed by the most people.

You see, the feed back you get from a blog’s dashboard is not unlike the speedometer on your car. It tells you how you are doing.

Probably the best feature on the dashboard, or at least the one I find most fascinating, is the tool that tells me what search engine terms people used to find me. Because that’s where it gets interesting. Or scary. Or funny. Depending on your perspective.

I’ve been watching my search engine list and decided it was time to share some of these with you. In doing so, I thought I might be able to provide additional, um… guidance, to those people who found their way here via the search engines. I try to be helpful like that. So without further ado…

I’ve had nearly a dozen people find me by searching on terms like:
carmex bad for you?; lips feel like sandpaper; why Blistex is bad; Blistex addict;
lip smakers addiction; and my personal favorite blistex DCT+the truth, as if Blistex has a big conspiracy going and the truth about it can be found on the internet. Or here, at my site.

I’m heartened by the fact that I am not the only one with a lip balm addiction. If you have found me by searching the internet for information about your own lip balm addiction, I point you here, and tell you that your problem is most likely related to the phenol (also known as carbolic acid) in your lip balm. It’s drying. That’s why you need to keep applying the stuff, why you can’t live without it. I did not make this up. I read it in the 1997 issue of Self Magazine. I have the little article, ripped from the magazine, at my house. If you really need to see it you can email me and I will scan it and email it to you. As a public service. To save your lips.

Over half a dozen people found my site because they have apparent problems with their feet. Queries on lost toenails from running; treat lost toenail; whole toenail black injury will it grow, are just a few. I am not a doctor. But, if you are a runner and you have lost a toenail, or if you’ve dropped a hammer on your toe and the nail has turned black, then let me tell you that yes, in my experience it will grow back. It could take six months to a year for it to do so. Just so you know. Also, for the person searching on treat lost toenail if you are still hanging around, I suggest you let the lost toenail go. There is nothing to do about it, once it’s lost you can’t treat it. Focus your energy on the remaining part of the toe that’s still there.

I am sorry to say that I cannot help the person who searched on pain in foot after car ran over it except to say that Ouch! I bet that hurts! If it happened to me I would probably cry and curse loudly, take some Advil, ice it up, and see the doctor. Maybe I’d get some x-rays. And a lawyer.

Then there’s the bunch of folks who got here by searching on guy ran over foot with lawn mower; man runs over foot with lawn mower; and mower cut off toe. If you are simply mocking my husband, that’s ~~ha! ha! ha! ha!~~ um… not funny! I am the only person allowed to do that. But if you’ve suffered a real accident, whoever you are, I do hope that you got yourself to an emergency room tout de suite. And by the way, that is French for immediately. Don’t waste time googling it. If you ran over your foot with the lawnmower, Go! Go now! Get to the emergency room! Google will not tell you how to stitch yourself up. Lawn mower cut patterns are very individual you see, and Google cannot hope to tell you all the possible ways to suture your particular injury. You need a doctor for that. Are you still actually reading this? Go!

Okay, now that the bloody stump guys are out of here, let’s talk about the people who are searching for the proper thing to wear under their skirts. I suggest a slip and a pair of underwear. You don’t want to get caught on film like Britney, do you?

To the person who searched for actresses wearing bunny tails: You are at the wrong place. Sorry. Try again.

For the person who searched on Why three year olds don’t like to wipe their own butt, I imagine they don’t like to wipe themselves for the very same reason you want them to wipe themselves. Poop is gross and it smells bad.

Finally, to the few of you who searched on husband doesn’t acknowledge birthday and husband doesn’t buy me birthday presents, send the cheap bastard here. I’ll tell him off for you. And if that doesn’t help, then I suggest you buy yourself a big expensive bling bling kind of gift and tell him to go to hell when he complains about the credit card bill. My husband buys me gifts, he just doesn’t like my favorite kind of pizza.

5 Comments

Filed under blogging, blogs, dashboard, google, humor, internet, search engine terms

August 17, 2007 · 10:37 am

Hell on Wheels

If you can believe Wikipedia, the term “Hell on Wheels” was “…used to describe the itinerant collection of flimsily assembled gambling houses, dance halls, saloons, and brothels that sprung up as Union Pacific railroad workers… constructed the American transcontinental railroad back in the 1860s.” I am not sure I believe this. I think the term was coined by a mother like me who got roped into chaperoning a preschool class on a trip to a roller skating rink.

And take my advice, if you too get roped into something like this, by all means bring your video camera. I wish I had remembered to bring mine.

I could have, and probably should have, driven my son to the roller rink myself, in my own car and with relative peace and quiet, but it turned out that one of the preschool vans (we needed three vans to transport all of the children) had an extra seat available and my son wanted us to “ride with his friends.” The extra seat turned out to be the one spot where only an adult could sit because the teachers couldn’t put a booster seat there as the seatbelt in that spot was broken. And that wouldn’t be safe for a child, but the teachers thought it was perfectly fine for a grown up like me. Although my son was certain we should ride in the van he wasn’t entirely convinced of the safety of me being without a seatbelt and insisted on holding my hand the entire way there. If we crashed, he was going to hold me in place. I imagine his reasoning was not unlike that of my mother’s long ago and how she used to throw her arm out across my chest when she was driving and had to slam on the brakes. When I was a kid, mothers’ arms were the precursor to today’s air bags and my mom’s right arm kept me, (yes I was sitting in the front seat, but hey, we didn’t know any better back then) from hitting the windshield when she had to brake suddenly. Or at least it did most of the time. And so I found myself relying upon my son to keep me secure and in place if the van crashed and rolled. But luckily, it didn’t.

Have you ever ridden in a van with 13 five year olds? Thirteen 5 year olds who won’t shut up? (“Awwww,” I can hear my son saying. “You said shut up. That’s a bad word…”)

Preschool has a system for this. The kids in the van are allowed to talk for five minutes to get the talking “out of their system,” then the teacher (in this case, Ms. K!) who is driving the van, turns on the radio. When the music plays, the kids are supposed to “make a bubble” which is code for “shut your mouth.” Only on this particular day, the kids weren’t exactly following this rule, and the teacher wasn’t exactly enforcing it. And I didn’t have any Tylenol or earplugs with me.

If you haven’t ~~enjoyed~~ suffered the privilege of riding in a van with 13 children at once, I will tell you it was like traveling back in time to witness a dozen times over the bickering of my brother and I in our youth as we ~~sat~~ fought in the back seat of the car for 17 hours straight on our summer vacations to Florida.

Conversations in the van swirled in the air like smoky complaints and accusations (because they were) and they sounded like this:

“Ms. K! Derek touched me!”
“I did not!”
“Yes you did!”
“Ms. K! Victoria is looking out the back window! She’s not looking forward!”
“Stop!”
“No, you stop!”
“Hey Snags’ Mom! Josh stuck his tongue out at me!”
“I said stop it!”
“Ms. K! Jenny is looking at me!”
“Snags’ Mom! Paul put his shoe on me!”
“Ouch!”
“Ms. K! Victoria poked me!”
“Did not! Did so!”
“Ow! Stop!”
“Stop touching me!”

But unlike my parents all those years ago, Ms. K! did not threaten to turn the van around and go back home. She just kept sighing and driving while I sat hostage in the broken seat belt spot half hoping the van would roll so I could be thrown out a window to somewhere quiet.

Eventually, even the children got tired of their bickering and they decided to play a rousing game called “Yellow Car” of which the sole object was to scream “YELLOW CAR!” any time they spotted a yellow car. And here I’d just like to say “Thank you, Jesus!” and “Praise the Lord!” to all of the car makers who rightly decided yellow wasn’t that great a color for cars and for only making a few of them at best. But woe to you Ford with your Mustangs… This could be worse, I kept telling myself. We could be playing “blue car” or “red car” or simply “CAR!”

Somewhere in the middle of Yellow Car the children got bored and decided the road was hilly enough to remind them of roller coasters and all at once (as a collective!) they all threw their hands into the air and yelled “Hands Up!” before leaning rapidly and swaying violently from side to side, as if attempting to tip the van. Then, as the road began a descent they’d scream, “Hands Down!” and put their hands down. Only this, in my mind, was reverse of what you might actually do on a roller coaster. I thought anyone who’d actually been on a roller coaster would keep their hands up on the descent, because that’s where the thrill is. But I didn’t argue the point because I was starting to feel a bit sick from the small space and the yelling and the hands flying everywhere.

After what seemed like years off my life, but was probably only 30 minutes or so, we arrived at the skating rink.

As we entered the building each child was handed a little blue ticket, the kind of ticket you might be given at a carnival and that you’d turn over to the ride attendant as you got on the tilt-a-whirl, perhaps. Immediately, the teacher took the tickets from the children and traded them (the tickets, not the children, but imagine how different this story would be if that were the case…) in for pairs of roller skates at the rental desk. I stayed with the children and helped them put on their skates and tie their laces.

Tying laces… whoever planned this field trip must have forgotten that five year olds today don’t know how to tie laces because they don’t wear shoes that have laces. Their shoes have Velcro. But roller skates don’t have Velcro. They have laces. And I had to tie them. All um… let’s see… 3 vans with 13 kids each… that’s yes, 39 pairs of skates or 78 individual roller skates (one for each foot) to tie… Make that 76. Sydney brought her own skates. She could work them herself, because they didn’t have laces. They had buckles.

I went down the row and tied the laces. And then the children stood up.

And then they fell down.

And then they stood up again and somehow maneuvered their way onto the rink. Where they fell down…. again. SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!

It was surreal. If I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn there was a sniper hiding behind one of the trashcans in the snack bar. A sniper with rubber bullets, taking out each child, one by one as soon as they stepped off the carpeting and onto the smooth polished floor of the rink. Because they ALL WENT DOWN. Each and every one of them. Except Sydney. Her skates, the ones with the buckles, also had wheels that could be locked in one direction. She could only march forward, but that was good because she didn’t fall. It was like watching cartoon characters slip on a banana peel, over and over and over and over again. And again.

At one point I surveyed the rink and saw a sea of splayed bodies down for the count. A few lone survivors, mostly teachers, myself, and Sydney, were left skating around the fallen.

Whose idea was this? I wondered. And why isn’t anybody filming this? I should have brought my video camera. At the very least, this scene, this giant accident of roller skating crashes needed to be investigated by Eye Team on our News at Eleven. They needed to uncover the truth behind the trip. Who was responsible? Shouldn’t someone have inquired if the children knew how to skate before turning them loose on a slippery floor without proper medical supervision?

But we were lucky. There were a few scrapes, a few bruises, a few kisses and band aids needed, but nothing broken. It could have been worse. I could have been on this trip with the senior citizens from the retirement home down the street. There would have been broken hips with that crowd for sure.

But the preschoolers, they were pretty game. They fell down or got knocked down or skated down and they got back up again and again. It was like hanging out with Chumbawamba, except the only thing around to drink was bottled water.

And then there was my son. He, along with one or two other children, found it much easier to simply crawl around the rink on their hands and knees. My son chased after Sydney this way. It was pathetic. It was like watching a legless stalker drag himself thru the weeds after a pretty woman walking a dog. “Get up!” I told him whenever I skated past. But he would have none of it.

After a time, Sydney took pity on him. She offered to teach him how to skate. And somehow she’d managed to retain her blue ticket, probably because she brought her own skates. She told my son if he did as she instructed and learned to skate, she’d give him the blue ticket. She convinced him the ticket had value. It was, she told him, a ticket that would enable him to play the video games in the rink’s arcade. And ALL the children wanted to play the video games. Only none of them had quarters. Many of them took to moping and frowning. They couldn’t skate well, and now they couldn’t play video games either. But for Snags, there was the promise of Sydney and that blue ticket…

So my son bravely stood up and readied himself for Sydney’s skating lessons. From what I could tell, the lessons required that Snags follow Sydney around the carpeted area that surrounded the rink floor and then across the slick divide of linoleum by the snack bar before the carpeting began again.

“Help me, mom!” Snags cried. “Sydney said I have to do this FIVE times before she’ll give me the ticket. I’m tired!”

“So stop,” I said.

“Can’t. Must. Have. That. Ticket!” he spluttered, somewhat out of breath as he desperately tried to keep up with his instructor.

I tried to convince him that he didn’t need the ticket, that it was not the key to the video games, and that he needed quarters for those, but he wouldn’t listen.

After their third time around like this, Sydney marched up to me and announced, pointedly, “He’s a Level One!” and then, over her shoulder to Snags she demanded, “Come ON!”

Another child on the field trip thought it important to come and tell me whenever a song had a dirty word in it. Hollaback Girl he told me, had a “bad word with the letter H in it.” He claimed to know all of the bad words in each song that played through the rink’s sound system, but he said he wasn’t going to tell me what they were. I guess he didn’t want to get in trouble. “Sometimes they beep the word out,” he explained. “And sometimes,” he continued “my dad sings the bad words in the car when they play the songs on the radio. That’s how I know what all the bad words are.”

We spent four hours at the rink during which time I too learned all the songs that had bad words in them. Those words came in handy later because I needed something to mutter under my breath when nearly all 39 children decided they needed to use the bathroom. Have you ever helped a child who cannot skate, no let me clarify that, who cannot even stand on skates, make their way to the bathroom while they (and you) are wearing skates? It’s not an easy task, and it’s not a pretty sight. Especially the puddle of pee that covered the floor inside one stall of the ladies room. I’m not sure how it got there. But boys were using the ladies room too, so that might explain it. I imagine more than a few of them rolled backwards while urinating. I don’t really know. I also don’t know why we didn’t think to have them remove their skates before using the bathroom. Probably we didn’t want their socks to get wet with pee.

What I do know is once the kids made their way out of the stalls I had to hold their hands and help them skate to the sinks and OMG! YUCK! YUCK! YUCK! I was touching hands of children who had just used the bathroom and most likely had peed upon themselves. And it turned out there wasn’t any soap. And only one sink worked, and on that, only the HOT water worked. So the children cried about the hot water. And then there weren’t any paper towels. So I had dirty hot little wet pee germy hands on roller skates gripping my highly superior germ phobic hands as I helped navigate them out of the bathroom and back onto the carpeted floor so they could go back out onto the rink and fall down again.

In the end, Snags got that blue ticket. He managed to complete his “skating lessons” per Sydney’s approval and she did as she had promised: she gave him the coveted ticket. It was wrinkled and wet and she handed it over along with a broken rubber band that I fear she might have found on the floor of the bathroom. I shuddered to think that’s why the ticket was wet. I have to say though, Snags was very proud of himself as he climbed into the van for the ride back to preschool. And my hands were itching furiously with some kind of skating rink dirty bathroom germs. But the return trip was quiet. All 13 children fell blessedly asleep. Until the van pulled into the preschool’s parking lot…

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Filed under germ phobia, humor, life, preschooler's, roller skating