Thomas has developed this horrible habit of pushing his mini-beetle car out into the street. We live at the top of a hill and so the vehicle will roll down the hill picking up speed as it goes and then rams into someone’s nice pickup that’s parked on the street (there are mostly pickups on our street – mini-vans are definitely the odd ones out). It is horrifying. And he’s doing it on purpose. I think he likes to watch me run, swearing, down the street trying to catch up to it before it actually dents something. I realize the absurdity of this. How can this:
hurt anything? It just can, it’s the Thomas-touch. The opposite of the Midas-touch.
So today I chased his trike down and caught up to it just as it swerved, avoiding two parked cars and then crashed into someone’s fence. Fine, this is on the low-side of Thomas-inflicted damage. But 10 minutes later Anthony sounds the alarm and I go flying out the front door only to see the mini-beetle careening down the hill heading for the intersection. At this point I am not even trying to do my “dignified mini-beetle recovery run”: lightly jogging – trying to play off my embarrassment and flipping my hair in a care-free, “I’m breezy” sort of way. No this time I have just let loose.
Then I see not one, but two cars approaching the intersection. Great Scott. The last thing we need is a mini-beetle-caused collision. So I start yelling for the cars to stop – interjecting “I’m so sorry!” – periodically. As I’m running I have plenty of time for the absurdity of my situation to sink in and I’m very tempted to fling my apron over my shoulders like a cape – just to really drive the point home. And yes, I was indeed wearing an apron. Somehow this just made the whole thing worse. Maybe because wearing an apron seems sort of pretentious, in a housewifey 1950’s sort of way. And the humiliation of the pretentious is much worse then the humiliation of a normal person. In the end no one crashed and everyone was very kind, of course – people really are very forgiving and kind toward strangers. And I took off my apron – just in case I am called back into action. I must keep my secret identity under wraps – at least until pretentious stay at home mom’s are recognized for our true glory.
Alexis, I laughed out loud while reading this post! Especially the "dignified mini-beetle recovery run" wow, that had me laughing for quite awhile. I too have had to do the "dignified run" to prevent one or more children from colliding with on coming traffic. No fun at all. Loved the image of the apron flying in the wind as a cape. Thanks for brightening my day!
ReplyDeleteSarah R.
Oh my Alexis, this was really laugh-out-loud funny. But the picture! That was worth a thousand words!
ReplyDeleteI just read this and laughed SO hard! The image of the dignified run story was priceless. Thank you so much for sharing your heroic maternal adventures :)
ReplyDelete-Sarah Patton