I just saw something on someone's diary about getting her kid off to school in the mornings ... the picture goes all wavy and blurry ... fade in on the music ... come with me now to the days of yesteryear ...
The Sibs and I are symbiotically related (as well as in other ways, but you knew that.) And our kids are apart from each other in roughly three-year segments: her J1, the oldest nephew, then her boy-girl twins, J2 and J3, then my R, then my K. Somehow that works out to a ten-year age difference between J1 and K, almost to the day, but that's why we're neither one of us math teachers.
Anyway, when mine were 4 1/2 and 1 1/2, the Hubs and I moved to this house, which is about a half block from the elementary school, and about three blocks from the house where my sister lived all those years while her kids were growing up. Mine were in daycare at the time, and the Sibs was divorced from her first husband (Satan J, the Three Jays' father), and married to her second husband, The Scumbag. I sent R, and then later, K, to all-day kindegarten at their pre-school, since I worked all day and that seemed like the plan to follow. The Sibs had gone back to teaching at the change-of-marriage point in her life.
Background complete. When it was time for R to start first grade, meaning the twins were in fourth grade and J1 in middle school, we planned -- symbiotically -- to send them off to school in the morning. I would pack up my girls in the car, and drop off R at my sister's house. She would have already left for work at this time. No idea where the Scumbag was, but I don't recall that he was there, although he may have been, because steady jobs were not his thing. But I guess he did work in these early years, so he wasn't around in the mornings, either. Then, while I was dropping off K at the sitter's, or school, little R would be in the custody of her cousins. J1, normally a responsible babysitter, would be catching the bus across the street from their house about a half hour before the others left for school. So that would be three kids, at first ages 6 and 9, alone in the house for a half hour.
Does that sound crazy? I don't know; it certainly didn't at the time, even to me, a well-known paranoid freak about my children's safety. Maybe the fact that as soon as they walked out the front door they were in view of the crossing guard helped, and that the school was so close, with the great big Board of Education building on the way there. This arrangement continued, by the way, until the twins went off to middle school, by which time K was in first grade, and she and R spent the morning time alone here at home, walking the half block to school on their own. But I digress.
Adventures often seemed to follow R and the two little Jays. Since part of the bargain was that I was on call for emergencies, since I worked here in the same town, I sometimes ended up knowing more about them than they would have liked me to.
One morning I received a frantic phone call from J2, the nephew, who said with great concern and certainty that I had to come home NOW, because THE REFRIGERATOR IS IN THE LIVING ROOM!
What?
THE REFRIGERATOR IS IN THE LIVING ROOM!
What do you mean? How did this happen?
IT'S ... JUST ... THE REFRIGERATOR IS IN THE LIVING ROOM! YOU HAVE TO COME NOW!
I ran down to the main office in school and told them there that I had to go because the refrigerator was in the living room, and I did not know when I would be back. Four minute drive to my sister's house. Where I discovered that one of the little dears had opened the refrigerator with such force that the door had swung all the way open, through the arched doorway between the kitchen and the dining room/living room, and in so doing had jerked the entire refrigerator an inch out of place, and now the door would not swing back closed. Technically, the refrigerator door was in the dining room, but I didn't quibble over semantics. I pushed it back into place, the door closed, and they went to school. The only thing the three of them could agree on was that none of them had been anywhere near the refrigerator when it had happened.
Several months later, I received another frenzied early morning phone call from J2, who was apparantly the designated dialer. YOU HAVE TO COME HOME NOW! THE RUG IS ON THE FLOOR!
Huh?
THE RUG IS ON THE FLOOR! MOMMY IS GOING TO KILL US! YOU HAVE TO COME NOW!
No, sweetie, rugs are supposed to be on the floor.
YOU HAVE TO COME NOW! THE RUG IS ON THE FLOOR!
Down to the main office, I have to go; the rug is on the floor. Four minute drive. Walk through the front door.
Damn, the kid is right. The rug is on the floor. My sister is going to kill all three of them.
Her living room in that house, a split-level, had a cathedral ceiling as well as white shag carpeting, which had been put in new by the house's former owners before they left, and which she had never replaced. The children, not to mention the golden retrievers, were prohibited from this room. The dogs, you will see, were the better listeners. On the giant wall on the far side of the room, which was the result of the cathedral ceiling, was a persian rug that was maybe 11 x 14. Feet. It was quite lovely. (Satan J had come from something of a privileged background.) Anyway, as you may have guessed, the persian rug was lying in a huge heap on the floor at the bottom of the giant wall. The rug was indeed on the floor.
The children had been inconvenienced by the refrigerator, realizing that they couldn't have just left it open all day while they went off to school, but the rug on the floor was a serious breach of house rules, since no one would ever believe that it had fallen without benefit of a child touching it. In the living room. And I couldn't fix this one. When I asked how it happened, I was told quite firmly that none of them had been in the living room when it fell. Uh-huh. On further questioning, they told me that this wasn't like the refrigerator, when R and J2 had been playing around with the door. This time, no one had been in the living room. Really.
And yet I continued to use this method of sending my kid to school in the morning, and used only a slight variation with my next kid.
What can I tell you. The Scumbag put the rug back on the wall, all of the kids are adults now and no worse for the wear, and the Sibs doesn't even live in that house anymore. The rug is now actually on the floor in the living room of her current house. To tell the truth, I always liked the fact that they covered for each other, and didn't just rat each other out to save themselves. It shows a nice sense of camaraderie. (Personally, I think they were all covering for the little one.) And three kids people have amusing stories to tell for as long as they live. As do I.
--------------------------------------------------
I'm watching The Daily Show
--------------------------------------------------
last ::
next
Sweet Sorrow - 06.12.2007
So ... - 12.19.2006
Christmastime Is Near - 12.18.2006
Fifteen Years - 12.17.2006
A Message From Our Sponsor - 12.16.2006
|
