When your youngest has wet his 2nd (and last) pair of pants on the drive back from Santa Cruz and you’re trying to keep a stall door closed with one foot and disinfect a gas station toilet seat with a seat cover, and he decides its time to go to the bathroom right now with you squarely in the line of fire, you tend to wonder why you ever had kids in the first place. But then from time to time they teach you a valuable lesson on how you should behave and everything comes a little more into focus.
It seems that lately we’ve been learning a lot more from our kids and massaging leg cramps from holding bathroom stall doors shut a lot less. I have always thought of myself as a good person. I hold the door for others. I tip more than 15%. I say “bless you” after a stranger sneezes. I know all of the words to the Star Spangled Banner and I have literally helped a little old lady across a street. But recently my kids have been running circles around me in the “doing what’s right” department.
A couple of weeks ago we were on our way home from church. Church lets out at 11:30 AM. By the time the kids are rounded up and we’re on our way home it’s pushing noon. I’m hungry. There’s nothing quite like the post-church feeding. I grab anything and everything in sight. I typically start the kids with two boxes of Mac-n-Cheese. My wife likes to remind me that only a couple of the kids like Mac-n-Cheese and that one box will do. I know this, but if I cook two boxes I can eat one of them with the stir spoon while it is still in the pan on the stove. This technically doesn’t count as a meal, this counts as clean up. I’m convinced that “clean up calories” won’t find their way to my waist.
I then find something for myself to eat. I also find scraps from whatever else we’re making the kids. Peanut butter sandwich? I eat the crusts, still fresh with peanut butter, honey or jelly. Top Ramen? I manage to eat at least a third of the noodles pre-cooked. On this particular Sunday we turned into our neighborhood and I was already dreaming of that Mac-n-Cheese! My oldest daughter interrupted my cheese-laced fantasy by saying, “That little dog looks lost!”
“Man, that really stinks,” I said, trying to remember if we had Lucky Charms, I was feeling like an appetizer.
“It looks like it has a collar, can we stop and help it?” she asked. Then a chorus of “C’mon Dad, let’s help!” echoed throughout the car. I stopped, the dog was indeed lost, and the kids saved the day. I felt terrible that I was putting blue moons, yellow stars and pink clovers in front of a little lost dog. What if one of our dogs would have been out like that? Well, actually if it was our puppy I wouldn’t need to break out the steam cleaner so often. Wait, no, no, the kids taught me a very valuable lesson.
Fast forward a week and we’re in downtown Roseville. The kids had pictures up in the Blue Line art gallery. As we drove through town I commented on the husband, wife and three kids who were dragging luggage on the sidewalk in what my outside temperature gauge said was 102 degree weather. “Man, those guys are hating life, they must be lost! Now where’s that art gallery?”
I didn’t have the sentence out of my mouth and my kids unloaded on me with “Dad, stop, stop, let’s help them!” Turns out that they were indeed lost. They had taken a train into Roseville and thought that a rental car facility was within walking distance. I sent my family into a donut shop, loaded up the lost family in our gar, plugged the address of the car rental company into my GPS and learned that they were over a mile from their goal.
The family was grateful. I returned a hero to my kids, and I was rewarded with two glazed old fashioned bars. Not a bad trade for a few minutes of work. But more importantly, chalk up another lesson learned from the kids. The next time my youngest wakes from a nap in the car to a puddle of processed Icee and I’m doing the mad dash to the disease infested restroom rather than look at the little man with frustration, perhaps I should give the guy a tip of the toilet seat cover and know that while I’m helping him out now, he’ll no doubt be teaching me another lesson soon.
It seems that lately we’ve been learning a lot more from our kids and massaging leg cramps from holding bathroom stall doors shut a lot less. I have always thought of myself as a good person. I hold the door for others. I tip more than 15%. I say “bless you” after a stranger sneezes. I know all of the words to the Star Spangled Banner and I have literally helped a little old lady across a street. But recently my kids have been running circles around me in the “doing what’s right” department.
A couple of weeks ago we were on our way home from church. Church lets out at 11:30 AM. By the time the kids are rounded up and we’re on our way home it’s pushing noon. I’m hungry. There’s nothing quite like the post-church feeding. I grab anything and everything in sight. I typically start the kids with two boxes of Mac-n-Cheese. My wife likes to remind me that only a couple of the kids like Mac-n-Cheese and that one box will do. I know this, but if I cook two boxes I can eat one of them with the stir spoon while it is still in the pan on the stove. This technically doesn’t count as a meal, this counts as clean up. I’m convinced that “clean up calories” won’t find their way to my waist.
I then find something for myself to eat. I also find scraps from whatever else we’re making the kids. Peanut butter sandwich? I eat the crusts, still fresh with peanut butter, honey or jelly. Top Ramen? I manage to eat at least a third of the noodles pre-cooked. On this particular Sunday we turned into our neighborhood and I was already dreaming of that Mac-n-Cheese! My oldest daughter interrupted my cheese-laced fantasy by saying, “That little dog looks lost!”
“Man, that really stinks,” I said, trying to remember if we had Lucky Charms, I was feeling like an appetizer.
“It looks like it has a collar, can we stop and help it?” she asked. Then a chorus of “C’mon Dad, let’s help!” echoed throughout the car. I stopped, the dog was indeed lost, and the kids saved the day. I felt terrible that I was putting blue moons, yellow stars and pink clovers in front of a little lost dog. What if one of our dogs would have been out like that? Well, actually if it was our puppy I wouldn’t need to break out the steam cleaner so often. Wait, no, no, the kids taught me a very valuable lesson.
Fast forward a week and we’re in downtown Roseville. The kids had pictures up in the Blue Line art gallery. As we drove through town I commented on the husband, wife and three kids who were dragging luggage on the sidewalk in what my outside temperature gauge said was 102 degree weather. “Man, those guys are hating life, they must be lost! Now where’s that art gallery?”
I didn’t have the sentence out of my mouth and my kids unloaded on me with “Dad, stop, stop, let’s help them!” Turns out that they were indeed lost. They had taken a train into Roseville and thought that a rental car facility was within walking distance. I sent my family into a donut shop, loaded up the lost family in our gar, plugged the address of the car rental company into my GPS and learned that they were over a mile from their goal.
The family was grateful. I returned a hero to my kids, and I was rewarded with two glazed old fashioned bars. Not a bad trade for a few minutes of work. But more importantly, chalk up another lesson learned from the kids. The next time my youngest wakes from a nap in the car to a puddle of processed Icee and I’m doing the mad dash to the disease infested restroom rather than look at the little man with frustration, perhaps I should give the guy a tip of the toilet seat cover and know that while I’m helping him out now, he’ll no doubt be teaching me another lesson soon.
1 comments:
totally feeling you on the "just home from three hours (plus bishopric, PEC, and tithing)" binge eating. It's "get out of daddy's way because I'm going to eat anything that's not nailed down" time.
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