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LAURA ON LIFE
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CAR DUTY
I got up this morning with a feeling of weariness thinking about one more task that I needed to do today that I didn't really want to do. Every week a different parent takes his/her turn helping to unload the preschoolers from their individual cars as they pull up to the door. This week was my turn. It was cold, damp and foggy out there. I just didn't want to deal with it.
I was envisioning disaster: There I am, trying to help a crying, whiny two-year old out of his parent's cars while his mother looks at me like I'm some kind of monster for daring to make him cry. The kids know they're not supposed to go anywhere with strangers because parents tell them that all the time. Well, I'm about as strange as they come. I know they're going to cry.
The first child I helped out had a worried look on his face. As it turned out, though, it wasn't because he was afraid of me. He got out of the car and looked around and said a little fearfully, "It's kinda fuzzy out here." I looked around and realized it was the fog he was concerned with. That made me smile and I remembered that two-year olds don't know about fog yet.
I told him, "That's called fog, and you wait and see. When the sun comes out later, the fog will disappear!"
He gave me a relieved smile and I felt like a hero.
One child was drinking a sippy-cup with chocolate milk in it…and he wasn't through with it yet. Did you ever try to get the many straps of a car seat around the hand of a child who won't let go of his sippy-cup? I thought about it for a minute and decided that other than ripping his little arms off, the only other thing I could do is ask him for a drink. I was taking a chance on this kid not being a generous sort. Most two-year olds are not. This one wasn't either, thank goodness. He looked at me suspiciously, snapped his hand way back and the sippy-cup went flying across to the other side of the car. While his arm was straight, I slipped it right through the strap. His mother applauded me.
Okay, this was getting fun. Next!
This girl was an adorable little chatterbox. I needed a step ladder just to reach the door handle of the huge SUV that her parents drove her to school in. I opened the door and this sweet little golden-haired magpie looked at me and announced, "I'm three!" And she sounded really happy about that.
I said, amused, "Really? I'm Laura!"
Not to be outdone she said, "But I'm three and I have a snackbox."
I looked at her snack box and said, "Yes, I see, and it has a princess on it that looks just like you."
She looked at it and considered that for just a split-second before she agreed, "Yes, I do!"
I finally got her disentangled from her car seat and set her on the ground. She looked so small and pink and angelic next to that humongous SUV that I had an immediate urge to pick her up to protect her from the monster truck. She was only about knee-high to a grasshopper. She could probably walk right under the truck without bending over. Then sanity returned and I figured that she would probably kick me in the gut if I tried to pick her up. Besides her mommy and daddy were sitting in that SUV. They wouldn't run her over.
So I took her little hand and led her to the door of the preschool while she chattered non-stop. We had just about reached the door when the sweet little angel turned and kissed my hand that she was holding. My jaw dropped and my eyes moistened.
Alright! That's it! Sign me up! When is the next time I get to do this car-duty thing again!?
Laura Snyder may be reached at lsnyder@lauraonlife.com
Or check her website www.lauraonlife.com for archived columns
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Young Again
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Oh, to be young again! Even my older boys who are only 22 and 18 look at the younger ones still in elementary school and wish that they'd never heard of the words final exam or SAT's or job placement or car insurance. They wish that going to school still meant finger painting, recess, and rhyming games.
Isn't it funny how the younger kids can't wait to grow up and drive a car and do what they want to do? They hate getting in trouble for forgetting things. They can't wait till the time comes when they can eat an apple without having to cut it up because of a missing tooth. Toddlers strive hard to become toilet trained and drink without a bottle. Adolescents want to be able to get a job and earn money because then they can buy the newest action figure or that video game their mom won't let them have.
As soon as these goals are met, however, they want their childhood back. They have so much when they are young and they just don't realize it. When you are a toddler, you can pop someone in the mouth for taking your toy and you get sent to bed. What I wouldn't give to get sent to bed now and then. A tiny tot can pull down a woman's neckline and look down her shirt to find out what she's hiding in there and all he'll get is a gentle set-down. You get put in jail for that kind of thing if you are older. You can say things when you are young that you could never get away with later in life. I know a little boy who walked up to a woman amputee and lifted her skirt to see where see kept her legs. An adult would get drawn and quartered for that.
Even in middle age we wish we didn't have to work everyday. We wish we could turn back the clock so that we could jump rope without making a trip to the bathroom. We wish we had the time and stamina to say "yes" every time a child asked us to play with them. Sometimes I wish I could just see the fine print on a medicine bottle without having to gauge the distance between my eyes and the bottle before deciding I just can't do it.
I want to jump into a chlorinated pool without worrying that my hair color will fade. I want to splash in rain puddles and play Ring Around the Rosy without being considered a retard. It's true that if you do these things with kids, it's acceptable. But imagine a group of businessmen in suits playing Leap Frog in the middle of the sidewalk. You'd have to consider long-term care for them. Right?
All too soon, however, I'm going to get my wish and regress into childhood. Like most other seniors, I will not be ready for it. I'll start by losing my teeth again. I'll start forgetting things and I won't be able to see well enough to drive anymore. Toilet training will start again, but I won't have to worry about jumping rope because I'll have my Depends on. Some miserable seniors will even go back to "the bottle". My husband and I won't have to work anymore, but we will probably want to, because we'll want to earn money for things that we can't afford on a fixed income. I won't be able to jump into a pool, but I will be able to swim without worrying that my white hair will become whiter. If I splash in puddles, play Patta-cake with my friends, or grab a handful of some 30-year old stud's derriere, people will just call me eccentric. So there are some benefits.
Perhaps when you get to a certain age, you just stop caring what other people think, and other people think you can't think, and that's when the fun begins…again.
Laura Snyder may be reached at lsnyder@lauraonlife.com
Or check her website www.lauraonlife.com for archived columns
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Way back in the days of lords and ladies and castles, one of the most prestigious positions to have was that of the chatelaine. The chatelaine was the keeper of the castle and as such was also the "keeper of the keys".
In general, it was the mistress of the castle that was the chatelaine, so even if the lord of the castle needed to get in, he needed to get with the chatelaine for the key. If she called in sick that day, nothing got done, because the chatelaine was fiercely protective of the keys and she wouldn't give them up even while on her deathbed. Because…well…what if she survived and she had already given the keys to someone else? She would be SOL. No one would give up the keys to the castle without a fight.
I tell you this information so that you will not underestimate the power of the chatelaine; the keeper of the keys. Perhaps it will help explain why I continually carry around a twenty-pound wad of assorted keys that would set off a metal detector at fifty paces. Maybe I just want to think that I am important.
When I was very young, I remember my father carrying around a huge ring of keys. I thought he must be one of the most important people in the world because of all those keys; maybe an aide to the president or something. Perhaps the president didn't want to haul his keys around all day so he gave them to my father to carry. They were probably the keys to the whole United States!
I found out when I was older that he was on the maintenance staff of a college. Which I thought was pretty cool, too. All those doors, and he had a key to each and every one of them.
My husband carries just exactly two keys with him: His truck key and his work key. That's it. Two keys. How does he survive? Even with only two keys to keep track of, he's always losing them, so I have to carry copies of his truck key and his work key, just in case. Although, like the chatelaine, I am stingy about giving my keys away. He has to sign a promissory note in triplicate to get me to lend him one of mine. I carry a copy of both of my son's car keys, too, in case they lock themselves out of their car. So far, that's only happened once, but it was enough to convince me that I needed to carry those keys.
I carry keys to all the doors on my house. Don't ask me why. I only need to unlock one door to get in. But I carry them all. I have keys to the post office box, and other safe boxes and even one to a diary I had when I was ten. I know there's at least one set of keys to a car that we owned more than a decade ago, but with all the other keys I haul around with me, I'm afraid that if I try to guess which is the set I don't need, I'll end up throwing out a set I do need.
In the last five years or so I have added those mini discount store cards that you can carry on your keychain, so…that makes me important. Nobody in the family can get those discounts unless I am with them. I can hear the teeth gnashing now.
Since I am basically a shallow person, I also have all kinds of colorful dangly thingies hanging from my keychain too, just to add bulk, I guess. But my pride and joy that I have just recently acquired for my impressive set of keys has to be the brand new, futuristic, sci-fi whachamacallit that my husband calls a "thumb drive".
This thumb drive is the "key" to my computer. Imagine that! All the information that I have typed into my computer for years fits on a little bitty doohickey the size of one of my keys! I'll bet no chatelaine ever had one of those! Now I feel complete.
Laura Snyder may be reached at lsnyder@lauraonlife.com
Or check her website www.lauraonlife.com for archived columns
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