Is this your typical morning? Because this is mine. If you don’t have kids, you can ignore this. Go dip your biscotti in some cappuccino as you sit around in a sate of undress, cruising the internet. At least, that’s what I imagine single/childless people doing in the morning…
Mom!
What.
They haven’t come out with the new Ninjago series yet.
What Ninjago series.
The one where the guy who sacrificed his life at the end to save his buddies, actually haunts a warehouse or a factory or something, and rebuilds himself in titanium.
How can he re-build himself if he is a ghost?
He just can, ok, and then he is, like, super powerful. And a robot ninja, which you can’t beat.
(Other child chimes in, while I try to drink as much coffee as possible)
Mom!
What.
I hate don’t want to wear the old underwear, I want the new ones.
They are in the pile you didn’t put away yet.
Oh. (she returns having pulled them from the bottom of the pile, spilling the folded bunch into the dirty stuff on the floor).
Sigh.
Put the rest of your clothes on, please.
No. (runs away)
So this titanium guy, he can like, crush other robots into a little ball.
Um-hum. You need clothes too.
Mom! (returns still half naked)
The pink princess only wears pink, and she only eats things that are pink. Which means, she probably poos pink! Maybe that is in the next chapter, ahahahaha
Maybe. No.
Put your clothes on! Jeez! (this is actually the boy talking, he is freaked out by nakedness now, he has a fig leaf in the form of star-wars boxers)
No. (runs away)
Third cup of coffee. My eyes are starting to open.
Ok, I have clothes on.
Socks too, please. (ignores this)
I don’t like the new waffles; I want the old ones.
Fine, eat cereal then.
But it’s Tuesday and we didn’t get mini-wheats yesterday and it was Monday.
Fine. (They get mini-wheats on Monday, as Mondays suck and the only way I could think of to make them look forward to Mondays was to give them sugar on that day. This actually works)
Half naked child arrives…
I didn’t get a double! He got two double mini-wheats!
Give her a double.
No, they are mine. He eats both at once.
He…he…ATE THEM BOTH!! Whaaaa!
I dig out a stuck together mini-wheat, which has somehow become a form of good luck, and chuck it into her bowl.
There.
Instantaneous quiet.
We have twenty minus before we need to leave the house people. T minus twenty minutes.
I dress. They play with shit and throw pillows at eat other and yell Hey! That’s not Fair! About 18 times.
Earthlings. THE TIME HAS COME TO BRUSH YOUR TEETH.
Stop calling us earthlings mom, we are people.
You live on Earth so you are earthlings too. People earthlings.
So this Ninjago guy can shoot laser beams
I don’t like these pants! They are crunchy!
They’re probably dirty.
Stop interrupting me! I forgot what I was going to say!
Ninjago.
Oh yeah. So this guy…
I want to go to a movie today!
STOP INTERUPPTING ME! MOM! STOP HER! I FORGOT AGAIN.
Judas priest we have three minutes to leave the house. Both of you, put your socks on, now.
NOW!
Don’t yell at me!
Don’t make me ask you fifteen times to put your socks on! (It has only been 13, I exaggerate)
Whaaa, he hit me in the eye. On purpose.
IT WAS NOT ON PURPOSE. SORRRRRRRY!
You aren’t. Sorry.
At this point I get an eye tic and shove them out the door, forgetting at least half of what I was going to put in the car, including my grocery list and the library books and swim goggles, which they both need so then I have to buy new super expensive ones at the pool because they know they have you over a barrel at this point and can charge you whatever they want.
So…. this is a pretty typical morning, or at least one half hour of it. If you ever wonder why your Mom is crazy, or she drank, or she stared off into space sometimes, not even wiping the drool away, but rather enjoying the catatonic fog she was in for just a moment there, well, now you know why.
I even read a story about a mom who just…disappeared. She walked off one day and didn’t come back. They looked for her for a long time, but to no avail. Thirty some odd years later she was found living in a homeless shanty under a bridge. She had missing teeth and was totally sunburnt to shit and looked like her life had been hard. But I know what happened.
It all had to do with socks.