I don't know if I deserve a medal, or "worst mother of the year" censure.
Ordinarily, Mad Scientist and Drama Queen take the bus to school, but
today I drove them. We were in a big hurry and everyone was in a
bad mood and Mad Scientist stormed out of the house without any of his
stuff, leaving me to deal with his 40 pound backpack, lunch, and
violin, plus my own stuff. Away we drove. Mad Scientist
immediately started grumbling about something, but I tuned him
out. Who wants to listen to a thirteen year old's
complaints? Nevertheless, as we drove, he seemed more and more
put out, and finally some of what he was saying penetrated my
brain:
I can't believe you're letting Drama Queen skip school.
This, I felt, was taking sibling rivalry too far. Insensed, I shouted,
"How can you say that when I am in the very act of driving her to school?"
Mad Scientist: She's not in the car.
Me: Of course she's in the car!
Mad Scientist: No she's not.
I turned around and realized he was right, that Drama Queen was
missing. We skidded around the corner and raced back toward home.
As we approached the park, there stood Drama Queen at the bus
stop--never mind that the bus had come and gone twenty minutes
previously. I slammed on the brakes, and like the trashiest mom
in the world, lowered the window and shrieked, "GET IN THE CAR!" which
she did, quickly, and we roared away.
Monday. Humph. Once unloading the two of them, I stopped at
employee health and proved myself free of TB. Then I was
photographed for my employee ID.
Edit:
With a beautiful symmetry, the school day ended with another missing
child crisis. Drama Queen got home at 3:00 as she's supposed to,
but Mad Scientist wasn't with her. Drama Queen hadn't seen him,
knew he wasn't on the bus, couldn't imagine where he was. Now Mad
Scientist, lately, has been obsessed with breaking into the network of
steam tunnels under the University of Virginia. The entrances are
securely locked, so I haven't been too worried, but this afternoon, I
decided he must have skipped out of school and gone for a daring
mid-day, working day, investigation and my overactive imagination had
him dead and lost forever underneath UVA. First I called the
school, to make sure he wasn't in detention, and the secretary was
unaccountably unconcerned. "MY SON IS MISSING!" I nearly
shouted. If I'd been there in person, I'd have been shaking her
by the lapels.
The secretary set off for a search of the detention classrooms,
promising to call me back. After about fifteen minutes, the phone
rang, and it was Mad Scientist himself, asking me to pick him up from
Knowledge Masters. Knowledge Masters is an "It's Academic"-type
after-school activity which I tried to sign Mad Scientist up for and
which he flatly refused to join. "I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!" I
screamed. Two seconds later, the secretary called back, huffing
and puffing, to tell me that Mad Scientist was definitely nowhere in
the building.
When I picked up MS, I once again told him I thought he'd died. "How would I
die at
school?"
he wondered, "Or, even more unlikely, how would I die at school and you
not hear about it?" He and his friend collapsed, laughing, and
even I had to admit it was kind of funny.
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Comments (11)
awesome.
My mom would have beat me with the violin had she been in your position.
HEE!
LMISS
As Chasing Dani said, the symbol of moms of teens everywhere. Such an adventure so far. And we are just at 14. Two more to go after this one. Maybe by the third I'll get it right!