5/9/12 - Wednesday

One car chase scene today.  If you want to pretend that you’re an executive at one of the big movie studios and I’m pitching you the exciting story of my life, have at it. It will probably make it a lot more interesting.  So, here we go: Me, hollering at the kids to ‘GIT (and yes I said git and not get) in the vehicle right this stinking second’ off and on for 7 minutes. Elliot finally ‘gits’ in and promptly ‘sits’ on my console backward like he’s ready to direct an orchestra in the back forty of my truck.  I said ‘what in the Good Name of our Lord Jesus (who, by the way, needs to come down and help me right now before my head explodes) do you think you are doing, son? Sit down, put your seat belt on and quit your goofing around!’ Giggles, fart noises, whining, etc., ensue.  I gave up hope and started driving anyway.  At which point he found his seat and his buckle with remarkable speed and agility.  So I gunned that big block V8 out of the driveway like any good-hearted dumb redneck does when they’re either sh*t-happy excited or super pissed off. 

Guess which one I was.

We get 200 yards down the road when I start waiting for that familiar shifting noise and wondering, ‘why is this damn thing not dropping into second? It’s heading toward the red line…’ I look down to find the other important information on the dash “M 1”. That is not some British black ops intelligence bureau.  That is first gear in this hog and it’s whining like a sheep in chicken wire.  In my haste and irritation I must have jammed the thing down one click too many.   So of course, I had to eat crow and shift around trying to find ‘Drive’ with a cup of coffee in my hand and my kids chuckling in the back. 

“Do you really think that’s funny? How funny would walking 13 and half miles to school be for you?” 

All the things I swore I’d never say have been coming out of my mouth with a frequency and intensity that assures me that the themes explored by Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Buddha and other eternal return proponents are indeed empirically supported. In fact, the evidence is in my truck.  It’s reverberating up against the windows and causing a cosmic cacophony of voices, endlessly repeating ‘get in the damn car and get in your seat belt.’  Go in there, open the door and check it out for yourself. 

Told you. Hey, maybe that was the orchestra that Elliot was trying to direct.

Back to the ‘off and on for seven minutes thing.’  So, I am inside the house, cleaning up the breakfast dishes, ordering kids' summer clothes online, vacuuming up dog hair, planning summer vacation and surveying the house for, you know, mom crap I gotta do. Every day. Eternally.  I peak my head out the door routinely and ask the children nicely to please get in the car so we can leave on time.  Now every single time I pop my head out, I see Elliot very innocently on his scooter and hear Henry from a ways saying, ‘okay, Mama, be right there.’ So sweet, I think to myself. 

I should have known those little turds were playing me!

Instead, what they had done out of my sight line was taken my big nice wheelbarrow (the kind that has like a dump truck style tail gate and bicycle tires) and somehow crushed that sucker into a barely recognizable pile of timber and twisted metal.  It now looks like a ’72 Nova – riding sideways down the road.   How they did this, well, nobody’s talking.

So back to the dropped transmission…The entire ride to school was characterized by one of my famously unsatisfying, unhelpful and largely unheard diatribes about the importance of not being a damn punk not only now but then, more importantly, when they grow up, too.  Let me just tell you that teaching little kids about their behavior by talking to them about it is like reasoning with a Dachshund.  They are still largely incapable of abstraction.  So, they hear ‘blah blah blah, Henry. Blah Blah Blah cookie. Blah Blah blah, Elliot.’ And then they respond with ‘Can we watch a movie now, Mama?’   

Uh, yeah. No.

The easiest way they learn seems to be by watching.  And repeating. Eternally. When the significance of this dawns on me, I think to myself, 

‘Uh oh, I am so scr**ed.’