Walker Races

            When the twins were little they were the fastest crawlers I had ever seen so when we were able to stick them in walkers we thought that that would be easier, and it was. Sort of.

            When roaming around our house they couldn’t do a lot of damage, we thought. Adam had a ladle (Yes, a kitchen utensil. It was plastic. He liked it and I never used it so I gave it to him) and while traveling around the house he swung it at a door that had a large mirror on it. He cracked that and broke the ladle in half. Okay, not so harmless but no injuries so that was fortunate. It never occurred to me that he would hit that mirror; he liked to look in it so much that causing harm to it was, to me, unthinkable. Besides, he was little, under one-year old, so him being strong and coordinated enough to break anything was not a possibility. He mostly just chewed on that ladle, he never hit anything with it. Until he did.

            We had our house set up so that the boys could travel around and have plenty of space but not be able to get out of our sight. When it was nice out my husband came up with a spectacular idea. We took the boys and their walkers outside and let them roam up and down our driveway. It was paved and there was no way that they could tip themselves over or end up in the yard or in the road. We would set them up and we would get some lawn chairs out and keep them company. Back and forth, for hours they would walk and run up and down the driveway. They couldn’t get to the road because there is a sidewalk and the gravel driveway beyond that to keep them honest.

            Shoes were too cumbersome for them and bare feet on a paved driveway was not going to happen so we put them in socks and let them go. Occasionally Drew would wear a hole in the top of his sock.  That’s right, on the top of his foot. He would get going and end up dragging one of his feet while he coasted or he would end up dragging it while he ran but either way, there was a hole in the top of that little sock.

            Our neighbors would smile and wave when they walked or drove by, seeing our kids cruising the driveway. I often wondered if they would venture by to get a better look at the coasters in their walkers. I would’ve, it was hilarious.

Library Hot Laps

            On a particularly lovely October day my boys had the day off from school, conferences you know. We hung out at home for a while and then decided to go to our local library as I am a huge reader and there is a wonderful children’s section and I can read to the boys there as well. It’s fun, usually. We got to the library and started to investigate what was new and happening. It happened to be Homecoming for the local school and we had time to see the parade that was starting within the hour. We didn’t make the parade. The boys and I spent some time in the kids section looking at books, doing puzzles and just enjoying ourselves. Alex was wandering around in another section and just being his quiet, good-natured self. After a bit I decide that I want to look around for myself and take the boys with me to the upper level. They decide that running would be a good idea. It wasn’t. I caught up with them and scolded them. They know how to behave. We move along. Then I see one is climbing up on a chair and jumps before I can register my library appropriate freak out. I have it out with them again and threaten that if they don’t behave and obey the rules of the library we are going to leave and miss the parade. This, I thought, would work. Next thing I know, I’ve lost track of the little track stars, they are off and running again. At this, I am fuming and have lost the ability to care about the parade and the candy that my kids would catch and that I would ultimately consume. I have them each by the hand and collect Alex and we leave the building. As I am getting them into the van Drew tells me that he had a great time seeing all the cool things at the library and that the only way to see all the cool things is to run. Sorry? He says that since there are so many things to see and the library is so big you have to run through it to actually see all of it. This kid is good. He knows I am ready to blow my top and before I do he thinks that he can explain away his and his twins’ bad behavior as a necessary thing to see cool and intellectual stuff. It, of course, doesn’t fly. As we are driving away Drew asks if I want to go to the parade and take Alex with me. I tell him that I can’t do that. That it is because of Adam’s and his hot laps around the library and their repeated refusal to listen that we are leaving and that I have to keep the two of them with me since they are so young. He explains that he would like me to go to the parade and to take Alex, that we would have a good time. I agree that Alex deserves to go but that that is an impossibility. I wonder where we are going with this conversation so I keep playing along. Then he gets to the heart of this. I could take Alex to the parade and he and Adam would come along only so that they could be safe and stay with me so that I could watch them and then I would also be able to see the parade. That was some clever thinking and quick too. I go back and forth about what I think my sons will be one day but somehow defense attorney always squeezes in there, for both of them.

Avoiding Prison

   I have mentioned sitting my kids on the stairs several times. To be clear, I sit them on the stairs for their own protection. It gets them away from me and I can cool off. If it isn’t the stairs that I use to keep them away, it’s my husband. There have been many nights that I have told my husband that he is what stands between me and prison.

Telling On Yourself

     Something that drives me nuts is tattling. If it’s something vitally important, fine, but other than that, no. My twins had gotten in the very bad habit of tattling for the most trivial of things. One poked the other in the arm, someone called the other one dumb, you know, the truly earth shattering things. When this all started I would have them both stand there and I’d try to figure out what happened based on the things I was told. Adam would tell on Drew for hitting him. I asked Drew why he hit Adam; he’d say because Adam kicked him, I’d ask Adam if he kicked Drew. He’d say yes. I’d ask why he kicked Drew, he’d say because Drew threw a toy at him. I asked if they realized they were telling on themselves in the process of telling on their brother. The looks on their faces were so funny, stunned realization of admission of their part in the atrocity. Finally the whole thing got convoluted and trying to keep the timeline of offenses in order was not working. I had no clue who started what but was asking why they’d tell on each other when they both were being bad and that someone had started it and that since I didn’t know who exactly started it that they were both in trouble. This met with lots of whining which is also fun to hear, ranks right up there with tattling on my list of things that drive me nuts. So now, everyone gets in trouble and scolded or made to sit on the stairs. If I have nothing on one of them other than they were tattling, well, then, that’s their crime. I can’t make a decision on who’s in the right or the wrong since neither of them remembers what started their fight so to make sure I nail the guilty party and not punish the one in the right, both get it. It’s an imperfect system but it’s all I’ve got.

Harry Potter is Real

   We saw a young man in a Ferrari jacket one day. Adam was so excited because that emblem means
that that guy knew Harry Potter and was in Gryffindor. I worked on telling him what Ferrari is and
that they use a similar symbol but he is a fan of Harry Potter to be sure and sometimes there is no
convincing a fan of the truth.

Keeping It Fair, Even Under the Most Disgusting Circumstances

            Getting haircuts is always an adventure and it usually never goes well. This week is absolutely no exception at all. We hustle in the door. We’re on time. We’re oblivious to the dead bird on the sidewalk that we just breezed past. My son’s stylist, Kelly, asks if we saw the bird as she is trimming up Adam’s little mane. I tell her we did not see it. She had been told earlier in the day that it was there and that it was bad for business to have it there. She was alone in the shop that day and said that she was not going anywhere near it. She wondered if someone had taken care of it since we didn’t see it but I told her that we most likely were all talking and rushing and could’ve easily missed seeing it so Alex, Drew and myself decide to investigate. We are without Adam’s leadership as he is indisposed, he is unavailable, he is in the middle of receiving his bowl cut. We press on without him. We edge toward the door. I reach for the handle and ease the door open. We all peek out the door and there it is! The horror! The cold reality of it all! Yes, the bird is still there and it is still dead. We shut the door and report our findings to the proprietor. Kelly. She is not at all surprised to hear that it is still there and still dead. We move along to the next topic. Adam, however, is now done with his haircut and is ready to be included in the mission but alas, it’s been completed successfully. He is unsatisfied with this. He is unhappy that he was excluded. He wants to see the dead bird and he tells us so by vehemently expressing to us that, “You all got to see the dead bird! I want to see it to!” Oh, to keep things fair between all the children and not be seen as one who plays favorites. Of course I must include him. I walk him to the window and point it out. Ah, to be a member of the family and included in the important things.

Reproduction

            One day, coming home from a concert at the high school we saw some bald eagles. They are really common in our area these days but I never tire of seeing them. Drew was asking if eagles have baby eagles. I told him they lay eggs like all birds. He asked if all animals lay eggs and I told him no, that some are born like he was, all wiggly and small and not in an egg. I also explained that everything has babies or they just can’t continue to exist, that I had been a child and now I have children and that they will someday have children, everything must have children if they are to continue in our world and that if eagles stopped laying eggs that they would no longer be around someday. Adam decided to enter this conversation. “Not everything has babies” he says. I disagree with him. He tells me that power lines don’t have babies. I tell him that he is correct in his assessment. I guess I neglected to mention that these things that have babies to continue in our world have to be living things. And here I thought I’d done so well in my explanation.

No Weight Loss Needed

            I monitor what the boys watch. Part of the job description. Anyway, I keep it pretty safe with all of them but the little boys especially. That being said I was rather taken aback one day when Adam came to me in the kitchen and gave a little sigh and said “I need to lose some weight.” Say again? He informed me that he was too heavy and needed help losing weight because being too big makes people unhealthy. Now this is not something that I thought I’d ever have to deal with because I have sons and not a daughter in sight to look at models and television and think she needs to look that impossibly perfect. We have a talk right there. I tell him that he is the perfect weight and that he is in no danger of needing to lose weight and that losing weight is not something that need ever cross his mind again. That child don’t diet and that I don’t know where he got such an idea. I know that with all of my positive comments and reinforcement of the facts that he is going to put this out of his mind. That’s when he told me that he needed to lose weight because the television told him so. Now I am confused and tell him that I need him to explain a little more and I am trying to think of what show I had on for him as to why such a theme would be addressed. A commercial was playing and it was for, of course, weight loss products. Since he was the only one in the room it, the commercial, was speaking directly to him. The voice on the commercial kept saying “you” need to lose weight and since he was the only one in the room it was telling him that he needed some help to trim down. I told him that the commercial was only for people who need help losing weight and that it is completely up to the person to decide for themselves and that he is not in either category. Seven years-old and 52 pounds go together perfectly. Captain Literal rides again.

Little Kids and Dining Out

     I am not fond of taking my kids out to do much of anything. Not because I’m ashamed of them but because they are such little handfuls. We were having lunch in a small restaurant out of town one day on our way home from a brief vacation. The little boys had just turned one so Alex was six. Anyway, we were sitting at our table feeding the little boys and trying to keep them under control when Adam took one of his little chicken strip pieces and tossed it backward over his head. To my mortification it landed in the middle of a table of ladies having lunch. We packed up everything to go and I retrieved the chicken strip piece from the middle of the table of ladies and offered my apologies. They were so gracious and, I think, amused, that they told us they had all raised children and understood. I picture them laughing after we left and were out of earshot.

Being Lazy Takes Practice

            Coming home the other day I told my sons that when we arrived at home that we all four were going to clean out the van. It was turning to spring and was a nice enough day that we weren’t going to freeze doing it. Nothing much, some trash, extra clothes that had been left, the occasional water bottle, easy stuff. Drew is lazy, really lazy. He is so dramatic in his laziness that I am constantly impressed with the lengths he’ll go to avoid any amount of work. He is very Shakespearian in his performances. Hand on his forehead, big, deep, cleansing breaths, stretching out to his full length on the couch or floor saying “I just can’t” and things of that nature. We continued to drive in silence for a little while when Drew spoke up from the back seat saying “I think that I’ll just get dad to pitch to me for a while until you all are finished cleaning out the van.” Quite matter-of-fact, quite grown-up in his delivery, quite wrong in his assumption. I told him that he could either help all of us or he would do it all by himself and we would watch him. This didn’t go over well but it did hit home with the little slacker. He was in-charge of the recycle.

Nocturnal Creatures

 

            When the twins were born Alexander had just turned five. He has always had a big vocabulary and understands the words he uses. He mainly was around adults and his father and I have a habit of throwing around fifty dollar words anyway. After a particularly hard night of our boys being awake all night and mom being dead on her feet and miserable Alexander shakes his little head and says to me “Our babies are nocturnal.” A truer statement was never uttered in the history of the world.

A Change in the Lyrics

    Coming home from piano lessons one afternoon found Drew singing a little song. This is nothing
new but sometimes I am busy thinking about something and don’t listen as I should. I heard that he
was singing "Old MacDonald" but it sounded a little different so I decided to not ask him what he
was singing but to listen and see if he’d repeat it. I was rewarded in a big way. He was singing "Old
MacDonald" but when he got to the chorus it wasn’t "Ee I, Ee I, O" it was "G.I., G.I. Joe." I laughed
so hard at that and told him how much I loved his song. He didn’t know what was so funny but he
obliged me with another verse.

Scary Twinkies

     Twinkies present a problem in our home. Adam has trouble saying Twinkie. Sometimes it comes out “Twinkle” and sometimes it comes out “Pinkie”…a work in progress. Drew, on the other hand, does not care for Twinkies because he doesn’t like the dots on the back of them. “Dots?” I ask. Yes, where the filing was shot into the Twinkie on the bottom of them bothers him and he won’t eat them. I think it has something to do with WALL-E. In the movie WALL-E, WALL-E has a pet cockroach and he, at one point in the movie, climbs into the bottom of the Twinkie through one of the filling holes and sticks his head out another of the filling holes. That thinking is more along Adam’s neurosis level but they do switch personality traits quite frequently.

No Beatings in Public

      We were having lunch at a restaurant between soccer games one afternoon and Adam was being a particular handful. Finally, I got tired of it. Supremely tired of it. The messing with the salt and pepper shakers and the silverware, tipping the chair, spinning his straw in his very full glass of pop. So I decided to give a warning to him that I think most every parent has given at one time or another. I leaned across the table and looked him right in that sweet, beautiful face and said “If you spill that drink I’m going to spank your little butt right here in front of everyone in this restaurant.” To this my terrified and intimidated little son looks back across the table at me without stopping the spinning of the straw and asks “Could you just spank me in the bathroom or something?” I command the fear and respect of my brood make no mistake there. I rule with an iron fist. I shake my head. I was at a loss for words. I think I mumbled “Alright” or something along that devastating and frightening train of thought. I think he got the message.

Handling Public Puking

       When Alex was four I took a day off from work just for the two of us. I had taken days off before and it was always fun and memorable. This day was no exception. We spent the day at the pool and had a lot of fun. It was getting to be late afternoon, early evening and I decided we needed to go. On the way home I drove by our local theater. It is a grand old place that has stood the test of time and has gone from old time opera house to the only movie theater in our little town. I decided that Alex and I would hurry home, get cleaned up and return for the first showing. We just made it and took our regular seats. As a special treat I let him get a soda with his popcorn. I hadn’t been big on letting him had soda but why not tonight? We were watching the first of the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ movies. He was cramming popcorn into his little mouth and drinking his soda like a pro when suddenly he looks at me and says “I’m gonna frow-up.” Oh crap, vomit. I rush him out of the seating area and head for the restrooms which are naturally locked. I’m a little worried now as there is nowhere close enough to get him in a hurry to keep from violating the carpet. Or is there? Trash can at 4:00. Holding him over the trash can in the lobby was an experience in learning that when you’re a parent you must be creative to avoid catastrophe and not care what kind of looks you get in the process. We did see the rest of the movie but now Alex gets to choose one or the other, soda or corn, never both, never again.

Ask a Stupid Question

         When my twins were newborn I would occasionally take them places. Sometimes alone, sometimes with my husband. I didn’t like to take them anywhere alone, the things that can happen are frightening and I was content to keep everyone home and remain safer. As it was, I did venture out some. I had a double stroller obviously, not one of those wide ones, mine was in-line but anyway I was asked on various occasions about the two babies. “How far apart are they?” When my reply was that they were two minutes apart more than one old crone had become terrible offended by that comment from me. “Well! You don’t have to be smart about it!” I’d heard a few times. The first time I was quite confused until I got it. She didn’t believe that they were twins. I was stunned. These two babies of equal size and shape, bald and toothless and with the same woman, their mother, and people assumed that I was a mindless breeder or had a newborn and a nine month old. Seriously? Incredible. After the first ridiculous and nosey woman, I was ready. Most people were kind and interested as well as interesting but there are those few that are asking because they smell scandal or something of a questionable nature. I am quite direct and very forward in dealing with people so some got a decidedly upfront and in-your-face answer when asking insulting questions about my multiples. Consequently, after dealing with the first hag’s questioning and becoming insulted by my truthful answer, to her I merely said “But they’re twins.”  After that when I said my children were two minutes apart and I received snotty feedback I simply said “Why yes they really are two minutes apart. You see one doctor ripped one from this side and another doctor ripped the other from this side as I was strapped to a table and cut wide open.” I provided sweeping hand gestures to go with the description. They got the point that I was not amused by their assumptions and walked away with their heads hanging. And rightly so. Ignorant.

 

            On the other side of the insulting questions are the charming and adorable questions or statements from people, namely other parents of multiples. When my husband and I took our brand new babies to their very first checkup they were a wee three months old. As I walked through the waiting room when our name was called a short little lady, in her eighties was my guess, grasped my elbow and said to me “My twins will be sixty-eight at the end of the month.” That made me ache deep in my heart and I will never forget it. Another lady at a store stopped me and said that her twins were nearly fifty-eight. When the little boys were about one year-old we decided that our older son needed a little vacation since having two babies in the house was stressful for all of us. We took him to St. Louis to the zoo, to Six Flags and ultimately to the beautiful Gateway Arch. When we were at the zoo we were taking in the sea lion show which for us, lasted about 3.5 minutes. We put Alex near the exit where we could see him and took the twins outside the gate to wander around and be rowdy out there rather than ruin the show for everyone else in the theater. As the show ended a woman walked out holding hands with two kids that looked to be about five years-old, as she walked past me she said “It gets easier” and continued on her way. I took strength from that statement and felt that if she could live to tell it, so could I.

Avoiding Death

     When Alex was learning to ride his bike, that was a practice in patience. He could get it going just fine but when it came to stopping he was a little challenged. He didn’t believe me when I told him that gently pushing his pedal backward would slow and ultimately stop him. Nope, that just couldn’t be. "It’s insanity," I pictured his common-sense telling him. So he preferred to ditch himself into whatever solid object he could find. Garage door. Front porch. Parked car. And why he didn’t like to ride I’ll never understand. He went for a ride with his dad one night to try to bolster his confidence and I neglected to tell his dad that hills should be avoided, especially going down hills at this juncture in the bike riding development. Needless to say, they went down a hill and my husband was surprised as Alex zipped passed him pedaling down the hill and sticking his feet out to the sides as he yelled "Wheeeeeeee" all the way. Then reality set in on my son, what to do now? Use the brakes? You jest! Slow down by coasting to a stop? Absurd! Crash your bike into the most dangerous spot you can find? Bingo! He purposefully crashed that little bike into a tiny, almost not there patch of grass between two driveways and a sidewalk which also had huge culverts in them. The Lord watched out for my son no doubt that day and thankfully we avoided stitches and an emergency room visit. I sent my son to my mother to have her teach him how to ride owing to the fact that I’d love for him to live.

The Inferno That Wasn't

     In the summer, as most families do, we enjoy swimming. We are responsible, we wear sun screen. The boys are used to me slathering them up with sun screen as they are on their way to our pool. At first it was a struggle, they didn’t like it, it was cold, it felt funny, it smelled weird, and so on but after explaining that it was either sun screen or no swimming my boys took me seriously and decided that they could deal. I would usually bring the sun screen back into the house at the end of our splash-fest but one day I left it outside. The next day we were preparing to go out and do it all over again but Adam wouldn’t get near the door. I told him to come on. He told me no way was he setting foot outside our door without his sunscreen. I told him that I would put it on him when he got outside but that was not good enough, he was not stepping out the door, he was even tip-toeing around the bit of sunlight that came through the windows because he was not going to get burned up by the sun. I knew that my little neurotic son wasn’t going to be swayed so I walked out, grabbed the sunscreen and saved my son from the incineration that he would no doubt incur from his walk out the door and to the little table where I had thoughtlessly left the sunscreen the night before. The table is, incidentally, under a huge tree with lots of shade so it wasn’t exactly in direct correlation with the flames that were surely awaiting my young man. Glad that I and the other two boys didn’t burst into flames from stepping out the door un-sun screened.  Catastrophe averted, thank goodness.

Babies Speak Spanish

     I am a second wife; my husband is older and has a grown daughter. She has a child which makes my young sons uncles. Taryn is her daughter and we love her. The boys are so fond of her and think she is so cute, which she is. At one point in her life, as with all children, we couldn’t understand a single word she would say. She’d chatter up a storm and laugh a lot but we had to kind of figure out what it was that she was after. One morning, after she stayed the night with us, Adam, quite matter-of-factly, was telling me that all babies speak Spanish and that is why many people can’t understand them. I was enthralled; I asked how he knew this. He explained to me that he remembers back to when he was a baby and that he spoke Spanish and when he got bigger it turned to English as is the case with all babies. I did try to explain that babies are trying to learn to form words with their little mouths and that it isn’t really a question of English or Spanish but rather what language they are exposed to. Nope, he wasn’t buying that. We left it at “babies speak Spanish”…for now.

Recognition

     When Drew was a very small boy, between one and two years-old, he would not call me momma. I was not happy about it, he called his father “da” and since I am the one who bore him I wanted a little recognition. Nope. “Da.” Everything was “da.” Fine. Whatever. Until...one day when little Drew had escaped my careful eye and climbed up on the dining room table and couldn’t get down. He was calling for “da” to come and save his little butt. I was the only one home that represented the parent population so when I peeked around the corner to see what was up, he was sitting on the table, legs kicked out in front of him and smiling that he said “Da!” A-ha…he’s calling me “da.” How about that? That was fabulous. My husband was not amused by the fact that we were sharing the title of “da” and teaching the name “momma” began to be a priority in our dealings with little Andrew.

Name Calling

     Adam had a serious talk with me When he was five years-old. He doesn’t like it that I call him dumb. “Wait” I said, “I have never called you dumb.” He tells me that I call him dumb all the time. I ask him why he thinks such a terrible thing. After he explains it to me I understand, I have called him dumb every day of his precious little life. Adam translates to Add-dumb. Ok, time to explain the pronunciation and the meaning of the name and whatever else I can use to try to get this very serious, very literal child to see that his mother has never called him dumb. Besides, his dad picked the name, not my fault.

Hiding the Pizza

            One night a week I go to my friend Rachel’s house and we have a girl’s night full of laughter and just good times. On these nights I still expect my children to eat dinner and I leave my husband in charge of this. Frozen pizza is as far as his culinary skills reach so I have a few tucked into the freezer for such occasions. I took my son Adam to the store with me on one of my shopping trips. He was maybe four years-old at the time. He is helpful and reminds me of things that I am forgetting or that have simply escaped my attention, things such as candy, doughnuts and cookies which I don’t usually buy anyway because I have absolutely no control of myself around such amazing treats. It might appear that I am a really good mom by keeping such crap away from my children, which I am, but the truth is that I am a weak, weak woman. On this particular trip I put a couple of frozen pizzas in our cart then asked Adam if he knew why his dad made frozen pizza for them on the nights I am gone. He looked at me for a second as if contemplating answering me, as if he knew the answer but didn’t want to tell me. This confused me for sure. Finally, after a little thought he tells me what I can only assume he thought was a huge secret. “Dad makes them when you’re gone so you can’t have any” is the answer my son finally gives me. It seems that he is tattling on my husband for not sharing with me. I tell him that since I am the one who does the shopping that I obviously know that said pizzas are in our home and that since I don’t have any in the duration of the week that I probably am good with the fact that Adam and the rest of the men in the house eat pizza without me and that I am not upset about this. He just shakes his little head as if conveying to me that I am a little confused about the motives of my husband and the missing pizza. I appreciate his truthfulness in this matter.

Vocabulary Concerns

            When Alex was about two years old he and I were home alone one evening and I was making a fire in the fireplace. He was sitting in front of the hearth with his little legs kicked out in front of him just tapping his feet when he, for reasons unbeknownst to me, says “goddamn it.” Wow…utter shock on my part. I take him to the stairs and sit him down to tell him the importance of good words and bad words and words we just don’t say. He sat there for a little while, which is my habit when my kids are in trouble, then he got up and joined me in the living room again. After just a little while he comes to me and apologizes by saying “Mom, I’m sorry I said shit.” Wow again, not only did he cuss, again, but with a new word. Back to the stairs while I sat on the couch shaking my head. Consequently, I have not heard him swear again, in nine years.

He Who Lives By the Fork...

            We read a children’s devotional every night before bed. Sometimes there is a little confusion and we have to discuss it. I love these times because what my children come up with is so original and off-the-wall that I have to really try to come up with answers. Cain and Able came up. Children of Adam and Eve. Cain killed Able out of jealousy. I thought that the parallels between the two brothers fighting and my twin sons fighting would spark some interest. Nope, that wasn’t it. “What day of the week was Able killed on?” I said that I didn’t know because the Bible doesn’t tell us. “Why doesn’t God want us to know what day of the week?” I said that it wasn’t that God didn’t want us to know but that it wasn’t an important thing to be worried about. My Adam was sure that it was a Tuesday; Drew thought surely it must’ve been a Saturday.  Then we got into hair color of the brothers. I thought that I could nail this one but I was wrong. I assumed middle-eastern would most likely have dark hair while Adam decided red and Drew thought it must be blonde. There was speculation as to how Abel was killed. Drew thought that it must’ve been with a big rock and Adam was fairly certain that Cain had thrown a fork at Able. I said that I was not sure what had happened exactly but I thought that I could safely rule out the fork scenario. We had gotten way off the subject so I said goodnight and shut off the light before I got in further over my head.

Blind Precision

            Drew was running one day and kind of throwing himself at me. I was sitting on the floor with my back to the couch when this started. He was not yet two and a little clumsy as all two year-olds are. He would run to another room then run to me and just fling himself at me as  he picked up speed. We did this for some time and it was so much fun…until the blood started to flow. Mine, not his. He was something of a biter but this didn’t occur to me to be a problem as he was moving at break-neck speeds and who can bite while flying through the house. Drew can, that’s who and with great precision as my doctors appointment will attest. I had a small mole on the left front just below my collar bone. You notice I wrote “had.” I was wearing a t-shirt and a sweatshirt on this particular day, the day of the event. As little Drew was running at me and I was catching him I received the most ridiculous injury of my life, and that is saying something considering some of the stupid things I’ve done or had happen to me. As I caught him on what became the last catch of that day he bit me, right through my t-shirt, through my sweatshirt and somehow managed to rip that mole from my skin. I let out a scream and ended up knocking him backward. He was scared and crying and I felt terrible that I knocked him down but before I could pick him up something occurred to me; my mole. I stuck my hand down my shirt and came back with blood all over my fingers. I still didn’t think that he could really have bitten me with that much precision so I took my shirts off and sure enough, it was gone, rather, most of it was gone. The rest of it I did find in my bra thank goodness. I called my doctors office and naturally couldn’t get in until Monday, this happened on a Friday and I didn’t feel like a trip to the emergency room so I waiting until Monday was what I’d do. I explained the nature of my injury to the nurse on the phone and said I’d see her Monday.  On Monday when I saw my doctor she walked into the exam room reading her chart and said to me “Ok, tell me the story because this says that your son ran and jumped on you and bit off part of a mole on your collar bone.” I pulled down the collar of my shirt and showed her my injury and she just shook her head.  I told her that the information on her clipboard was correct and that it took the child a fraction of a second to do it and that it was all an accident, and done blindly since I was clothed in layers that day. She’s been my doctor for years and we are great friends. She laughed while she proceeded to take the rest of my jagged little mole off so that I could heal up and forget this episode. I should’ve had that mole removed years and years ago as I always hated it. I guess I owe Drew a debt of gratitude.

Nail Polish Isn't for Everyone

     I like to paint my toenails. I’m a girl and it makes feet pretty. When Drew was around one year-old he sat down by me as I was painting my toenails and stuck his little feet right up to me so that I could paint his as well. I sighed and tried to explain that it’s for girls, not boys. That, of course, didn’t matter. So I did the only thing a mom in my position could do, I painted his big toenails only. It was a compromise. My husband was less than thrilled and tried to talk to the little boy about it but Drew was so enamored with the shiny lilac color on his toes that nothing that my husband said penetrated his thinking. This went on for years. I’d sneak into the bathroom to paint them and then act as though nothing was up. Drew would notice the shininess and instantly sit for me to paint them. After about a year of this Adam decided it was the thing to do as well so I painted his big toenails, too. They wore shoes everywhere and it wasn’t as if everyone saw it or knew. That is until I had their pictures taken for their third birthdays and they were barefooted. If you know what you’re looking for you can see that they both have shiny lilac big toes. At least it wasn’t red nail polish.

Candy is the Devil

            I have a love/love relationship with candy. I love it and it loves to go to my ass and stay there. I try to avoid candy for this reason but I am weak and can only say no so many times.

            Halloween is hard for me, as is Christmas and Easter and birthdays and any other time of the year when candy is on the guest list. The only candy that I can say with all certainty that I hate is Peeps. You know, those marshmallow shapes covered in sugar…they make me sick but only because, years ago, my then sister-in-law and I ate a record 92,000 Peeps, in the car, as we drove to her father’s house from a grocery store so that we would not have to share them with our families when we got back to his house. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t 92,000 and sure, we had it coming for cramming them all so we wouldn’t have to share but I have never been able to look a Peep in the face since then. As a joke one year my friend Frank got me a special surprise for my birthday, which happens to fall in the spring when Peeps are in bloom.. A bag of Peeps. I felt my lunch rumble a little. Thankfully it didn’t escape.

            Halloween candy presents another problem. I have three kids and they trick-or-treat. There are bags of candy in this house the day after Halloween and it is too much for me. If it isn’t hidden I will eat it. All. I will eat all of my children’s hard earned Halloween candy. I have done it before and I will do it again if I am not stopped. This happened as recently as last Halloween. My husband came home from work and asked what happened to all of the candy for he thought that he would indulge in a tiny candy bar or two. Foolish man.  I told him that I was weak and that he needed to help me. He took the pitiful amount of remaining candy to his truck and locked it in, then hiding the keys. I felt the monkey crawl off my back at that point.

            My children didn’t get upset with me, they understood and I did promise to make it up to them and buy them more candy on the condition that they hid it from me. They did, they are good boys.

I stopped buying Halloween candy years ago because the candy never made it to Halloween night. Ever. And now I take my children out into the night to beg for candy to support my habit. Such is the lot of the candy addict.

Sister of Pumpkin Head

            Everyone in my family loves Halloween. Some of us love it a little too much. Take my little brother, Steve. He went to culinary school so he is a little more artist than some. He carves the coolest jack-o-lanterns and will have a huge butcher knife sticking out of the top of it or take some gigantic screws and spark plugs and have them sticking out at various places in poor Jack’s head. He has, on several occasions, gotten a pumpkin big enough to fit over his head and made his jack-o-lantern a mask…and then set out to scare the bejesus out of unsuspecting family members.

            I had just arrived at my mom and dad’s house to have my little boy trick-or-treat them when my parents asked if my brother had found me yet. I knew that this was a bad thing considering that they were laughing. I asked why he was looking for me; they said “no reason, he just wants to show you his Halloween costume.” I didn’t know what he was dressed as but I knew that he was out to scare me into peeing my pants. I became a little paranoid and decided that we would go to my grandma’s house rather than be a sitting duck for whatever was coming for me. I am that big of a chicken.

            My mom, my son, my husband, and I went to my elderly grandma’s house and spent some time there, all the while I was looking out the window and waiting for the door to swing open and have him run in to frighten me. I did feel safer at Grandma’s though because I knew that Steve would not try to scare me at the expense of giving Grandma a heart attack…until I learned that he had already been to her house in his costume. The boy had no shame but for a moment I felt that my efforts at hiding out were going to pay off. He had already been to Grandma’s so he wouldn’t need to come back. But I also considered that he was looking for me and all my short-lived comfort evaporated.  My mom was telling me that he had shown our other brother his costume. Steve had hidden in the back seat of his car and sat up once the driver’s side door shut. I was feeling really squeamish at this point.  

            We decided that it was time to leave Grandma’s and head back to my mom’s to drop her off. It was ridiculously dark out and I was unhappy that I had to walk thirty feet to my car in this pitch black night. Steve could be lurking behind my car or behind a tree, waiting for his opportunity to jump out and scare me to death. We got to the car without incident and I wish I could say that I was breathing easier. I was not; we were just a moving target now.

            We pulled into my mom’s driveway and there was my brother’s car. I jumped out of the car before it stopped, good thing my husband was driving, ran to the house and plowed through the front door just as he was putting his mask on to go out the back way, no doubt to circle the house and scare me before I made it to the sanctuary of the lighted entry way. He had on old, dirty coveralls and the biggest jack-o-lantern I had ever seen was his mask. Upon seeing him in this getup I was thankful that I had found him before he found me. I would’ve peed myself for sure.

            Sister of Pumpkin Head, that’s me.

A Blind Date to Prom

            In my high school years I dated a guy who had a great mom and two wonderful sisters. Since I have no sisters I latched on to them and never have let go. It is now twenty-two years later and I still haven’t let go of them. One of them was the maid of honor when I got married the first time (not to her brother) and although we rarely see each other there is still so much love there.

            Back when I was dating their brother there was a situation that arose that really torked us, the sisters, their mother, and me, off. The younger sister, Wendee, was getting ready for her Senior prom when she found out that her date had decided to be a jerk and not escort her. I remember showing up at her mother’s house and her mother was doing her hair and telling her that she could go alone and it would be fine. Wendee did not agree. Her older and very protective sister, Necole, showed up a little after I did and we rallied. This had to have a fix. We began to brain-storm. Wendee was just going to skip her prom but her sister, mom and I were not down with her not going. She looked beautiful and her dress was dazzling, I had gone with her to shop for it and it would be a true disaster if no one saw her in it.

Prom was in a few hours and everyone had a date…except my younger brother who went to a different high school. I called him and asked if he had any plans, he said he did not. I asked if he wanted to go to prom with my boyfriend’s sister, who he had never met, and explained what had happened to her. He did mention to me that he did not have a tuxedo just lying around but Necole, Diane (the mother in this story) and I were way ahead of him. We all jumped in Diane’s car and went to fetch his tux. We knew where the now-replaced prom date had ordered his tux from so we pooled our money and went to pick it up. My brother was just about the same size as the other guy so this was working out beautifully. We got the tux, jumped back in the car, and raced back to the house to wait on my brother to arrive, meet the lovely girl he was taking to prom, and get dressed. They even had enough time to keep their dinner reservations with her friends and their dates before heading off to the dance.

Never underestimate the power of resourceful and really angry women because they truly can find a way to make anything happen, even conjure a (better) prom date within hours of the dance.

Fifty Dollar Words

      Adam and Drew were spending a quiet evening with my mom one night. Just the three of them. She was reading while they were jumping on the trampoline not far from her. Adam needed a drink and told my mom about it. She in turn asks him what the magic word was and he answered her. “Abracadabra?” And she was expecting it to be ‘please’. Silly woman.

      When the twins were born Alexander had just turned five. He has always had a big vocabulary and understands the words he uses. He mainly was around adults and his father and I have a habit of throwing around fifty dollar words anyway. After a particularly hard night of our boys being awake all night and mom being dead on her feet and miserable Alexander shakes his little head and says to me “Our babies are nocturnal.” A truer statement was never uttered in the history of the world.

 

      We were driving to Alex’s all-band concert the other evening when we passed a cemetery. Adam just shook his little head and said "Wow, that sure is a whole lot of dead people." It made it sound as if there was just heaping piles of dead people lying out in the open with no regard for order. Sometimes he is incredibly literal.

Ratting Out the One You Love

      One night we were at my children’s elementary school for Alex’s orchestra concert. There was a sign that was hanging that said ‘WELCOME’. Adam was asking me about it. "What did it say?"

    "Welcome" I reply.

    "Why is it red and white?" he asks. 

    "Because those are the colors that were chosen for the sign" I tell him.

     He is still studying it and I know we have more we are going to discuss about the sign and it’s origins. After a minute or so he says "Ok, I get it. The ‘o’ is silent."  Huh? Alright, I let that one go for now, the explaining is more than I can do some days, besides, he is learning to read at school and this is a good one for his teacher to answer and explain.

 

            At parent/teacher conferences this year we heard a few things that we really didn’t expect. Adam and Drew are in the same kindergarten class so conferences were easy. What we learned was that Adam will raise his hand to get his teacher’s attention…to tell on his brother. There are two kids named Drew in the same class this year so my son is known as Drew B. Adam raised his hand in class to tell his teacher that Drew B. wasn’t doing his work. When I asked him about this he denied it all but since I heard it from the one who called on him when he was telling on his brother, I believe that he did rat his brother out.

Musical Classrooms

 

            I was a little concerned when my twins started preschool. Whenever I try to think out possible obstacles that await my twins I usually come nowhere near the real possibilities. I assumed that they would do well because they had always had each other and so that meant that they had learned the important things like how to share with others and such. Sure the sharing thing comes and goes but my oldest had never had to worry about that as he was the only child so this is something I thought I had nailed in lieu of the future of the twins. Sharing in the extreme is what I got. The boys were in separate classrooms, not by any design of mine as I had no preference but the school decided this and I was okay with it. A few weeks into the school year Drew’s teacher wanted to speak with me. Uh-oh…this was the first of many, many times that she and I had to speak. Anyway, they had noticed that Drew was missing from the classroom at the same time the other teacher noticed she had an extra student. Yes, Drew wanted to play with Adam so he just went to him. Also during naptime Adam’s teacher noticed the boys napping together on Adam’s rest mat. I tried to address this at home with little success. “You need to stay in your own room” “You have a different teacher and classroom than Adam” “People will worry about you if you are missing from your room” etcetera. To these brilliant reasonings my little boy would simply ask “Why?”  and after considerable trying on my part and Drew not coming over to my way of thinking Adam stepped in, literally, standing in between Drew and me and stating quite simply that “He can come visit me anytime he wants.” Okay, who am I to argue with the bonds of brotherhood? The school was on their own as far as I was concerned.

God's Dog

            We had a dog named Turbo. He had been my dog for more years than I could count but my

twins had known him for the last few years of his life. He was a miniature Schnauzer. He was grey

and looked like a little old man his entire life. He was adorable and it broke all of our hearts when he

was killed. Drew still brings him up and tells me that he misses Turbo. Drew has some musings about

the dog afterlife. He knows of Heaven and all that we believe is waiting for us on the other side of

this life. Why should it be different for dogs? Drew reckons that Turbo is now God’s dog and that

God is taking care of him until we all reunite in Heaven one day. He believes that God pets and walks

our dog. That God wants our dog to be happy in Heaven and because of that Drew is certain that God

has all sorts of wonderful things for Turbo to pee on. Turbo was a property marking little pooch. He

was particularly fond of peeing on the tires of my car so it would stand to reason that God would

provide tires for Turbo to make him happy and feel right at home. I must concur with Drew’s ideas

and find it charming that my youngest son has put such thought into wanting Turbo to be happy while

he is away from us. When I get to Heaven I will not be at all surprised to see tires of all sizes just for

my dog. Rest in peace Turbo, we miss you.

The Killing of the Juice

      I have learned that I need to work on my enunciation. We read the Bible and a variety of non-Biblical literature. When the boys have a question they raise their little hands just as they learned to do in school however when I have my nose in a book I don’t normally see the little digits waving to me with a confused little boy at the end of that arm. I was asked why anyone wanted to kill ’juice’ and that you really can’t kill ’juice’ because it isn’t alive and that this story really doesn’t make any sense at all. As always, it takes me just a second or two to come up with  what on earth is being asked and when did I say anything about juice? Jews. Juice. I get it. I explained that I was really saying Jews because they are a group of people mentioned in the Bible. Then I am asked why they, the Jews, wanted to kill juice. No, we need to back up a little. The Jews, I explain, were God’s chosen people, that juice had nothing to do with the story and that I had said the word ’Jews’ and it sounded like ’juice’. Both twins look at me as though disappointed that there was really no juice in the story and that that was a huge letdown.

Keeping the Story Straight

         I was reading the Bible to the boys at bedtime and we came upon on of my favorite stories, the story of the wise man building his house upon the rock. It’s been a favorite all my life and I was so pleased to read this thousands year old story to my children and in hopes that they favor it as well. The boys both ask many questions while I’m reading and I try to explain that if they keep talking through the story that we will never get anything read but still, the questions come. As I was reading that the wise man built his house upon the rock and that no storm could harm his home and therefore he was safe as we are safe who build our lives on Christ and that the foolish man built his house upon the sand that is neither strong nor constant nor safe and his home was vulnerable to storm and strong wind as the man who doesn’t put his trust in the Lord is not protected either. The boys understood what I was telling them and got that there was a metaphor for life and wisdom in that little story of architecture and location, location, location. However, there was something that was a little confusing to them. What happened to the man that built his house of straw? I’m a little stumped because in the version that I grew up with there was not another man in the story, there was no other neighbor building in the area and then it dawned on me. They had gotten the story of ‘The Three Little Pigs’ confused with this story of the building of a sturdy home and the flimsy home and of the huffing and the puffing that was such a dominant theme of tonight’s discussion. All I had the heart to say was that I didn’t think that there was another man in this story but that it would’ve been just as good a story if this other contender had been mentioned. This seemed to satisfy so we moved along.

Faux Pas

 

            When Alex was about three years-old we were at church during the Christmas holiday and as is customary in many churches we all shake hands and offer the sign of the Lord’s Peace to those in our vicinity. Alex was a shy little thing so I would stand behind him and point him toward people to shake hands with. He was in the midst of shaking hands with a very pretty teenage girl when he sneezed all over their clasped hands. I was so mortified that I had no words but I did have the presence of mind to keep going but did not have the wits about me to realize that my kid’s hand was covered in spit and that other’s might not want to shake that little hand. Naturally I pressed his little contaminated hand into the hand of the girl right next to the original bearer of the sneeze. After she was good enough to shake his hand it occurred to me that I had made a serious faux pas. I did break out the hand sanitizer and passed it back, hopefully redeeming myself a little.

 

            Our church is very near our home and it happens to be on the way to the boys school. When we walk home from school if there is anything in the yard we pick it up. Usually this consists of sticks. I want my kids to do things to help others just because it is the right thing to do so when I have an opportunity to help, no matter how small, I take it and try to instill in them that it’s right. There are many trees in the church yard and we are usually lucky enough to get a handful or two of sticks and twigs to pick up and carry to our home and put in our burn pile with the sticks from our yard and our neighbor’s yard as well. We pick up in her yard too. One day Adam was not exceptionally thrilled to be picking up sticks and posed a question to me. ‘Why doesn’t God pick up His own yard?’ I told him that God had provided us with a yard and that I was thankful for that and that if I could help keep His yard free from sticks and trash that I was happy to do it, and that he, Adam, was going to be happy to do it as well. He shrugged and muttered something about all of the big things God can do that He could at least pick up his own yard. Such reasoning could make sense I guess but I don’t subscribe to it. We pick up the sticks.

Yelling is Permitted, Part II

          Yelling, I do a lot of it and unfortunately I am pretty damn good at it by now. Usually I yell when I find clothes that I was told were put away, crammed behind a bed or hidden in the bottom of a closet or when I find names or little pictures carved into the sink top in our upstairs bathroom. You know, the totally random, utterly bizarre everyday things that make us crazy not to mention, loud. Being at home is one thing; I am not usually prepared to yell at church but it has happened.

            My sons went to Sunday school every Sunday like the good little boys that I forced them to be. They hated it, so I was told, and I assumed it was because they could’ve been home for that extra hour before church actually started. I am a paranoid mother though so I decided to wander over to the church early to see what I could learn about the Sunday school class and why it was so unpopular with my little boys. It didn’t take me long to see exactly what the problem was. The teacher was a bitch.

            She was an older woman and I had a strong dislike for her from day one. I hadn’t realized that she was the one teaching my boys. I did what I have done many times at the elementary school; I stood outside the door and listened to how my kids were treated when the teacher thought no one was around. That is a really good way to cut through the crap, be invisible. She was not teaching as much as she was putting down my children. In short, she was playing with her life and not smart enough to know that. I heard her tell Andrew that he was a little slob. He was five years-old. She told Alex that the way he had colored things looked stupid. Alex is sensitive and very artistic. That was all it took for me to walk right through that door and tear her a new one. Slob? Stupid? Bitch. I told her that she was obviously not capable of being a decent person, to children and adults alike, and that being around children didn’t agree with her condescending disposition. I began to clean up the things that my children had used in the duration of their last ever Sunday school class, all the while this woman was talking and laughing like we were friends. She was uncomfortable that she had been caught and she knew enough about me to know that I was going to tell everyone I knew about her and how she had spoken to my kids. My kids were very popular at this church because they were the only children among so many elderly. Part of me thinks that this ridiculous, pain-in-the-ass of a woman simply has no social skills whatsoever but it is not the job of me or my sons to teach her that which has escaped her for her entire life.

            As I was walking out the door with my boys Andrew picked up something of Alex’s and held it out to him, she ripped it out of Andrew’s little hand and tossed it on the table saying that Alex would get it when he was ready. Wow, so, so stupid. I picked it up off the table, handed it to Andrew and stepped so close to her that I was practically standing on her toes and told her to never, ever come within arm’s length of my children or myself again because she would likely land on her ass if she ever tried to put down or discipline my kids ever again. The look on her stupid face was unmistakable; fear. Just the way I like it.

            I am never afraid to burn a bridge, I have plenty of friends but even if I didn’t I’d be alone rather than be around someone who is not worth my time or my effort. I am not someone who will pretend to get along with someone that I absolutely can’t stand just for the sake of getting along. That is pretentious and does no good. Better to let people know where they stand with you; you have a better chance at avoiding the crap if you avoid the idiots that are out there roaming the streets and the hallways at church.

Yelling is Permitted, Part I

    It really is a lot of fun having and surviving my children but it's not all fun and games. Sometimes people need to survive me when they are involved with my children.

    One of my friends is fond of saying that to be friends with me you need a healthy dose of fear, that is not true for my friends but for others...that might be a safe outlook.

    I have gotten into some major throw-downs with teachers, doctors, nurses and the like. If you are someone's mother you better find the ability to not care what people think about you and be ready to open your mouth when your child needs you to. Motherhood is not for the mousey and meek.

    Case in point, my oldest was hospitalized when he was five years-old for pneumonia. It was a big lesson for me in understanding that not all people who are supposed to have your child's best insterests at heart always do.We arrived via ambulance and my son's doctor was not on staff at this hospital so we had doctors appointed to us. One of his doctors took me aside and explained to me that he did not feel that my child had pneumonia, he felt that my son had allergies and wanted to have him tested. Allergies? I saw the chest x-ray, I knew what we were dealing with, besides, my son had never had so much as a cold or the sniffles in his life. I was not impressed with his assessment of my child's condition but I asked why he felt this way. To my surprise he simply said to me that I needed to trust him and let him do these tests on my child. Red flags were flashing all over the place as this irritating man spoke. Let him run tests on my kid? Just because he said so? No way. We continued to talk/argue for sometime when he finally admitted to me that none of his colleagues agreed with him. Not one person agreed to help him bamboozle me with his desire to guinea pig my child so he tried to push his luck and trick me into having my kid tested for allergies. That set me right off and I told him that he was not to cross the threshold to enter my child's room again. And he didn't, he sent one of his residents to do it for him...with a tray of needles to use on my little boy to test him for allergies. I failed to mention that this was a teaching hospital, the famed and glorious University of Iowa where all of my kids were born. Teaching is fine, I had had students talk to me and help take care of me and my children after they were born. I had been happy to do it but this was different. This was a kid, my kid, and a doctor was lying to me to get his way and have a body to work on. I didn't leave my kid's side knowing that the moment I was gone that the doctor would be on his way to use my unprotected child as a classroom teaching tool.

    As we were leaving two days later I had a nurse approach me and tell me that she was proud that I had not just taken medical advice at face value and that it makes her sad that more parents are not advocates for their children. I had a long and loud talk with patient services once we were home.

    Don't be afraid to yell and stand between your child and whoever is trying to push them (or you) around. My true regret would have been being suckered in and had my child suffer needlessly for a man who tried to convince me that I should just shut up and do what I was told.

Chasing the Children...At Church

          Church is always interesting with little kids. Our church has what it calls ‘A Time with the Younger Church’ where our pastor or other members call the kids forward to tell them a special Bible story and has a little prayer then sends them back to their seats. This is sometimes quite nerve racking for me. One day they were talking about Noah and the Ark and did any of the children know about Noah. My little Adam’s hand shoots into the air and he proudly announces that he does know about Noah, as a matter of fact he knows about both Noah’s because they are both in his preschool class. He didn’t understand the rest of the story that was being told because there are no large boats in the preschool room but the congregation had a ball with that. We went home and brushed up on our Bible stories after that.

           My children attend Sunday school. It runs from 9:30 until about 10:20, in time to be out for church to start. Our church is less than a block from our home so we walk. I wandered over to church about 10:10 just to wait on my boys to be finished. I was walking up and down the hallways just spending time in the quiet when from behind me I hear "You get back here!" and I turn in time to see my sons' elderly Sunday school teacher cross my hallway for another at breakneck speed, for her anayway. As my three are the only ones in her class, I have a pretty good idea who she’s chasing.

 

          One particular Sunday was not what I’d call fun in any sense of the word but it’s worth writing about. During Joys and Concerns a little boy waved for the microphone. What he said made me ache to my core. "My mom died and I cried a lot because she was my only mom." He was sitting with his two older sisters, grandmother and aunt and uncle. They all began to cry and I felt for them. In the midst of this I felt three little pairs of arms wrap around me and knew that my sons were holding on to me to keep me safe and keep me here.

Skywalker vs. The Apostle

 

        At church there is always a reading from the Old Testament, the Psalms and the gospels. One particular day the gospel reading was from Luke. Drew turned to me in all seriousness and wonder as he asked me if it was Luke Skywalker we were going to be reading about. He is a huge fan of Luke Skywalker so you can imagine his disappointment.

 

          The boys are always asking me when church is going to be over. I always tell them that it’ll be soon hoping that that will appease them. It rarely does but it’s what I use. One day we were singing the song we close church with every single week and Drew recognized it as the last hymn. As soon as the music stopped he jumped up, clapped his little hands and said in a voice that carried all through the sanctuary “Yay! Church is over!” I know that everyone else was thinking it but to have my kid shout it was not what I needed. Everyone chuckled and it was funny and precious but I do teach my kids manners, they just don’t always take hold.

 

           I wondered how long this next tradition would go on before it was questioned. Easter Sunday had come around and we had communion at church. As we received our wine a.k.a. grape juice my little boys were looking at it asking if it was really blood. "Why do we have to drink blood? That’s kind of gross, I don’t want to." I guess that they had finally listened to something in church and retained it. We were talking through the rest of church as I told them that it wasn’t really blood and that I wouldn’t have them drink blood because I am not a mom who practices pagan rituals. That didn’t go over as I’d hoped but since I did help prepare the Host for church that day I promised and crossed my heart that it was not actually Jesus’ blood but a representation of the Savior and his love for us. In the end, I drank mine first and that was enough to convince.

Mothers Can Be Very Outspoken

 

            Lloyd,(the co-worker in the previous blog entry) became a true nuisance, whether from low intelligence or no social skills I couldn’t say but it did become a game to see how long it would take me to run him off. On one particular night I was in no mood when he approached me and a co-worker with nothing important to say but decided to run his mouth anyway. My co-worker, Frank, and I had met up because we had candy and were planning on eating it but the man-child who stopped to annoy us didn’t rank up there as someone I would share candy with so we had to put off our snack. That reason alone gave me license for what I was about to say to him.  For a bit we made some small talk with him, thinking that at some point he would wander off and annoy others but as luck would have it, he had no one else he wanted to bother or else they were all better at hiding than Frank and I had been. After what seemed like a lifetime of listening to him talk about his mom and his sister and his brother and his neighbor’s sister’s best friend’s uncle I had had enough and it just flew out of my mouth. It was out before I knew what I’d said, it didn’t take the time to complete itself as a coherent thought in my head , it just formed and became ‘moron-be-gone’. I looked him straight in the face and asked “Do you think your parents still do it?” I was shocked at myself and mortified that he might actually answer this question. Maybe he came from a completely inappropriate family where this subject didn’t make his skin crawl as it should’ve. I stood my ground; I didn’t give myself pause or permission to look away. I had said it and if I acknowledged that I shouldn’t have said it then that would’ve put me in the position to be nice to this headache of a man for all time. There would be more conversations because if I show that I am sorry or feel that I crossed the line then that gives him the upper hand, it shows a change in the balance of power and I refuse, refuse to be held to niceties of office politics. I continue to look at him as though expecting an answer. Truthfully I expected him to flush and walk away but that would’ve been too simple. He sputters and says that "no, they don’t do it, my dad sleeps on the couch" to which I hip him to the fact that people can have sex on couches. I can’t shut up, at this point I am so tired of him that I just keep talking, arguing. Frank has a look of total astonishment on his face, mixed with a look that says he is trying with all his might to not laugh. To the comment I made about the couch as a place for rampant, wild, hot, sweaty sex he assures me that they do not have sex anymore. I ask how he knows this. He tells me that he just knows. I say that that is no answer. He stutters, clearly uncomfortable and wanting this to be over but it’s not going to be over, not until he leaves me and my friend to our candy consumption. We could be in for a long night of back-and-forthing about his parent’s sex life and considering that Lloyd is wholly unattractive I don’t want to even think about the parents doing it on the family sofa. Finally I say to him that since he is standing in front of me and I know that he has a sister and a brother that I also know that his mom has given it up at least three times in her cloistered and virginal life and he might as well accept that. He has a blank look on his face, it seems that the wheels in his head are turning and that maybe he never considered the fact that he and his siblings were not conjured out of thin air or found in the cabbage patch or grown in a jar like sea monkeys or even adopted. He turns and leaves. Frank and I ate our candy and laugh ourselves stupid over the conversation that just occurred. It became the stuff of legend. I did not get fired although I did sweat it out for a while, waiting to see if I got a call to visit H.R. to discuss my inappropriate conduct. It was inappropriate and I have no excuse other than I just couldn’t take it anymore and I snapped. It was rather out-of-body like, truth be told.