As It Turns Out, It Was An ’80s Hair Band That Was Causing All The Trouble

Yesterday was my mother’s CT scan at Dana Farber.  In an act of bravery equivalent to that of opening my vanity door in my bathroom, I took the kids with us.  ”Chemo” is a very obscure concept for them and a CT scan — a quick procedure in a less germ-infested part of the hospital — seemed like a good way to show them the big building that Kukla and I go to on those mysterious chemo days.

So, I was lucky to find three seats together in the crowded waiting room.  They sat silently in a row and my  mother and I sat in two seats directly across from them.  Within a couple of minutes, my mother started giving me the “Am I having a TIA or are your kids being quiet?” look.  I mean, they did not make one sound.  They sat patiently with their hands folded in their laps and their ankles crossed.  I don’t know what the fuck was wrong with them.

My mother was called in for her scan.  I leaned forward to praise my heathens for how well they were behaving and in the process, I must have caught the eye of one of the nurses.  She came over, looked at the kids and said to me “I had to come over here to see who you were talking to, because I couldn’t believe there were actually children sitting in those seats.”  Then, as happens sometimes, a roomful of strangers all starts to engage in a single-topic conversation, now that someone broke the ice.  They all started marveling over how amazing my kids were and how easy they must be to raise. One older woman said “My grandchildren would never, ever, ever sit quietly like that.”  And then — brace yourself — she asked me for parenting advice. Some grandmother asked me, me – the one who really doesn’t understand (but does abide by) the law that prohibit parents from strapping their kids into bed at night – “What do you do with them to get them to behave like that?”  And as tempted as I was to say “Fear” I smiled and said “Well, they’re real monsters at home, so it’s a rare day that we are out somewhere where they actually have to behave at this level.  We dole it out so that the need to be totally silent is a novel concept to them.”  But, yeah, some crazy grandma asked me for parenting advice.  I can only pray that she was there for a brain scan.

After the incident with Crazy Lady, we got out of the city without further incident.  And then it hit the fan. I learned a valuable lesson.  Apparently, if Jack needs to suppress his natural self and behave for 45 consecutive minutes, he eventually cracks open like an insane pinata full of jawbreakers and spider spittle.  Because last night he went In.Fucking.Sane.  Uncontrollable. At dinner, he actually took a swing at me which prompted me to swiftly grab him and drag him to his totally useless and ineffective time-out spot.  As I picked him up, he kicked his legs out at a 90 degree angle from his body and hurled all 34.2 pounds of Jack to the floor.  You may think 34.2 pounds isn’t a lot of weight and Grace and Jack consistently weigh the exact same (down to the tenth of a pound), but when it’s Jack’s 34.2 pounds it feels like so much more than Grace’s 34.2 pounds.  So, he flung himself out of my arms and in the process, he pulled every muscle of mine above my waist.  I couldn’t move my back, waist, abdomen, arms, wrists, fingers, nothing.  It took a major pharmaceutical assault to get me functional again and my wrists and fingers are still tingling.

Today, Cory had a play date with his closest friend from the town we lived in before our move this past winter.  They’ve kept in touch over the phone, but I really wanted to make sure that Cory got a face-to-face visit in before school started again.  They are both obsessed with all things Star Wars and all things Lego.  His friend’s mother says that they don’t even make a peep when Cory visits because they are just so lost in their galaxy far, far away.

The drive to his friend’s house is long and with construction it is even longer — an hour each way.  The plan was that I was going to bring him, go to my brother’s to visit for a few hours while Cory had his visit, and then pick up my kid and head home.  I dropped Cory at his friend’s house and got involved in conversation with the other mom.  She’s a really nice woman, but we can never get into the proper rhythm of conversation.  We constantly go to speak at the same moment and then stop and wait for the other to talk at the same time too.  Stilted.  Anyway, I was telling her that I was off to visit my brother and my ungrateful ten year old said “Yes, mother.  Why don’t you move along your way and do that then?” coupled with a sweeping hand motion.  I know kids get bratty as they approach their teen years, but it took a massive amount of restraint to not level my kid right there in his friend’s living room.

After I dropped off my brat, we drove the fifteen minutes over to my brother’s house.  He must have forgotten about our visit, because he was asleep with locked doors and windows and didn’t answer my door pounding, swearing or phone call.  Neither kid was willing to be part of my man-made grappling hook scheme, so we drove all the way home with Jack screaming “IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!  IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!” the entire way.

Upon our arrival home, the kids ate lunch, had a few minutes to destroy the living room and my will to go on before we had to leave again to go pick Cory up from his play date.  Allow me to do the breakdown for you:  Four hours of driving so that my ungrateful twit could have a four hour play date.  That’s Brat Math, folks.

In conclusion, there’s a price for everything in life and I have paid so dearly over the past 24 hours for the three-quarters of an hour of quiet that my kids gave me.  Stay tuned tomorrow, because I’m doing that intensive cleaning where I scrub baseboards and crown molding — it’s almost like nesting as I anticipate a surgery date soon — and I will be documenting and photographing my children every step of the way as they help.