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Lessons
There was something different about me yesterday. I’m not sure what it was, but I woke up feeling oddly familiar. I found myself longing for my red, white, and blue tee, denim capris, socks, and sneakers. Yeah, the socks made me look like a dork but I didn’t care because my feet were cold.
I went to a meeting yesterday for Grace’s school and stepped right out of the box. I spoke up. I made points. I made some people cringe, looking like a hippie but dropping ten and eleven letter words. *grunt* But I didn’t care because I woke up feeling familiar, like I was being reunited with the chick I used to be a long time ago.
There was something different about me all day yesterday. I’m not sure what it was, but I felt like the old before-the-children-came me. I was on a mission yesterday, dorky socks with sneakers and capris and all. It didn’t matter where I went or what I did, I made points and statements, taught lessons. It made for a busy day. *snort*
Take, for instance, Da Man. When I returned home from the meeting he was lying in bed crying. My first thought was that he had received a bad phone call and had some heavy piece of info to drop on me. But I was wrong; he was crying because his head hurt him so badly.
After arguing with him about whether or not he was going to the doctor, I simply called the doctor. And then I took him to the ER as told. We spent a couple of hours there. They gave him some sort of medicine in an IV that made him a bit loopy and a lot tired (“lightweight,” I called him for not being able to handle the buzz).
We ran an errand to the grocery store for the neighbor last evening. As I was loading the girls into the buggy (that would be a “shopping cart” for those of you a bit further north of the Mason Dixon line), a huge Suburban caught my attention. The teenage chicka was pulling into the spot right next to ours.
I continued getting the girls out of the truck and into the buggy. I saw her back up because she couldn’t turn her monster of a SUV into the spot. And I saw her pull quickly into the spot. Then I stopped fastening Mak’s seat belt and watched her because I knew she was pulling too quickly into the parking spot. I looked up just in time to watch her plow right into the front end of the car in front of her.
I said to Da Man, “That chick just hit that car.” I looked up and the girl was looking back at me, laughing. She covered her face. I said, “You just hit that car.” She laughed again and put her monster of a SUV into reverse. And I watched her begin to drive away.
I caught her license plate number and began mumbling it to myself. I yelled at the back of her monster of a SUV, “Hey! You can’t just drive away.” I watched another teenage girl walk in front of her monster of a SUV and head toward the car that had just been hit. And yet she still drove away.
Da Man told the girl getting into the car that her car had just been hit. She was all confused, wanting to know who, what, when, where, and how. We explained it to her--at least three times. I was still mumbling the license plate number and finally said, “If you have a pen, could you write this number down so I can stop saying it over and over again?” She did.
As she was pulling her cell phone out of her purse, I looked up and saw the runaway driver standing in front of the store. She was staring at us. I could tell that there was a battle between good and evil going on inside her brain. And I saw her turn and begin walking into the store.
Maybe it was the fact that the name of a very exclusive private boarding school was screaming at me from the front of her t-shirt. Maybe it was the fact that I had sat through a meeting hours earlier and listened to all the “oh no my child won’t be around people like that” that I could stand. Or maybe it was because I had my girls with me and I am constantly trying to instill in them a strong sense of right and wrong, I don’t know. But suddenly I heard my voice yelling to be heard five rows across the parking lot, “I have given her your license plate number and she knows what happened, so you might as well come over here and work this out.”
I thought Da Man was going to pass out.
The runaway driver slowly made her way across the lot. She wasn’t happy with me at all. She would open her cell phone, hit a button and then slam it shut. The other girl was calling her grandma to let her know that her car had just been hit. She was a mess, that girl. “I’ve never had to do this before so if you could just stay with me for a minute,” she kept saying. It was quite comical actually.
There I stood, girls in the buggy, sporting a tie-dyed tee and dorky socks. The runaway driver, dressed in her private boarding school tee and Daisy Dukes, standing there, opening her cell phone, hitting a button and then slamming it shut. The other girl, babbling onto her grandma about not knowing what to do while at the same time asking us to stay with her for a minute. Grace in the buggy asking over and over and over again, “What girl did the bad thing, mama? Mama? What girl was it? Was it the brown haired girl that was bad, mama?”
I walked around the front of my truck. I looked at the front end of the car and said to the runaway driver, “It doesn’t look like you hurt it.” opened cell phone, pushed a button, slammed cell phone shut “Dude, you can’t do that, you know, just hit someone’s car and drive away. What in the world? You need to learn that there are consequences for your actions.” That’s when Da Man started giggling. Bear in mind that he was high from the IV drugs. “You just called her ‘dude,” he said to me. Yeah, I guess I had. And I did it while I was wearing my tie-dye tee and dorky socks.
After my dude spouting, I told Da Man to handle it and headed inside the store with the girls. They were sold out of everything on my neighbor’s list so we walked out. Da Man was in the truck. He started laughing as soon as he saw me. He had finally told the car girl to exchange insurance information and to tell her grandma to have the car checked out by a mechanic. He said that the runaway driver ran into a friend of hers as she was walking into the store and they began talking and pointing at our truck. Da Man said he waved at them every time they pointed in his direction. I guess the runaway driver wasn’t too thrilled with us at all, but you know what? I don’t give a damn.
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t my place to tell “dude” that there were consequences to her actions, but I don’t give a damn about that either. She’s lucky I didn’t go off on a rant about how her private boarding school didn’t mean fuck all to me because I would rather my girls grow up poor and righteous than well-off and morally bankrupt. I’ve had it up to my fucking eyeballs lately with people thinking that they are better than anybody else because maybe, just maybe, they have it a little better. And I would like to think that if someone saw my truck get hit in the parking lot that they would speak up, especially if the person who hit it was well aware and laughing about it as they drove away.
Da Man kept talking about it and talking about it on the way home. It was almost as if he was trying to wrap his head around the fact that I had actually done what I did. It didn’t seem that extraordinary of an act to me because I have always been Protector of The Underdog.
After listening to his synopsis of the event for the third time, I said, “You know what? The runaway girl had an attitude and disposition that she was above it all. I think she may have just had to realize that she isn’t above it all, that her private boarding school status didn‘t mean shit to some of us. And the other girl learned that there are still good people in the world, and the next time this sort of thing happens she will know what to do. I taught them both something today.”
I drove Da Man home so he could go to bed. He came inside and told mom that I was heading to another grocery store and couldn’t be left alone because I was fighting with people. Mom went to the store with me, probably more out of wanting to know who I was fighting with than any other reason.
We picked up the things on the neighbor’s grocery list and proceeded to the check out without incident. And then the peppers that were on sale 10 for $10.00 rang up for $15. I almost pointed out the fact that, according to their Scan Right Guarantee, the peppers should be given to me at no cost instead of for $5.00, but I figured that I had said enough for one day.
posted on Apr 17, 2008 9:57 PM ()
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And you rock.
Go girl! 
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