Just One of Those Days...

I emailed this story to a friend earlier today, and as I hit send, I realized it was basically a post for here. So, some backstory: In April I moved into a duplex where the family next door has 4 kids all under the age of 9, who are completely fascinated by me. Who can blame them, right? Anyways, on with the story.

Picture it, Dorr, MI 2009. A sunny and warm June afternoon.

I'm out finishing up some grocery shopping that I couldn't do yesterday because of my foot. (I slammed my ankle in the car door 2 nights ago, long story.) As I'm bringing the groceries in, the little boys who live next to me are outside playing, but of course, they see me as fresh ears to listen to their inane stories (which are usually cute, I admit) so they drop their remote control plane (so cool) and run over to tell me all about the Webkins. Oh, the Webkins. Almost as annoying as Pokemon.

So here I am, trying to bring in my groceries, my purse, and my cell phone without dropping anythng, and my sunglasses keep slipping from the top of my head, and they are going on and on and on about how they feed their webkins, and brush their teeth every day, and the one is a lion and his name is Tom and do i know how cool webkins are? and also, why do I sleep so late every day? do i not have a bedtime? and then, the other day he forgot to feed his webkin and it was soo funny.

This me: "Uh huh, yeah webkins are cool, yeah this girl I know has a pink dolphin one. no for real, she does.yeah, you really should give them baths every day. yeah. uh-huh. mmhmm. OhMYGOSH willyoupleaseopenmydoorformebeforeIdropeverythinginmyhands!?!?!

He laughs at me and opens the door and then launches into "Can we play with the cats?"

No. You may not play with the cats right now, but maybe later. So I'm finally inside the house, and I get everything put away, and then I'm looking around, trying to figure out what to do next, and so I decide to clean out the inside of my car.

So I take a deep breath and prepare myself for the explosion of questions I'm going to get as I do this. So I get everything situated, and there's not a lot of room in our garage so I have to back the car out into the driveway to be able to clean it.

Well, because the kids are playing in the front yard, and all of their toys are scattered, I'm looking over my right shoulder as I back out of the garage to make sure I don't kill a kid, ya know?

I didn't kill a kid. I did kill the passenger side mirror of my car. Completely ruined, hanging limply against the side of the car, shattered pieces of glass all over the driveway. Can you say awesome?

Before I can stop myself, the words, "Oh FUCK me!" are out of my mouth. Then I remember that there are little super-Christian ears right near me. I get out of the car and look around to make sure their mom isn't around, and promise to give them each cookies if they promise NEVER to repeat that in front of their family. They nod and agree as long as I promise to still never tell their mom about the time they rode their bikes straight into my car while I was watching.

Great, now I'm making deals with 5 and 7 year olds. My life so rocks.

So now, before I can clean out my car, I'm picking up bits of broken glass and listening to "did you hear the bang when it hit the garage door? that was so cool. why did you run into the door? did you think you could make it? are you a bad driver? you seem like a bad driver? that was so funny, the old neighbors never did anything fun like that. can we play with the cats now? are you ever gonna get a new mirror? what happens if they give you a green mirror for the gold car? that would be so funny. why is your hair up in a ponytail? my mom has short hair? are you going to clean out your car? the backseat looks really messy."

I know what you're thinking. No, I didn't kill the kids right then and there and bury them beneath the shed. I brought them into my house, gave them each two cookies, and let them play with the cats for 10 minutes. Then, they went back outside and played in the backyard while I cleaned my car out peacefully.

So tell me, how is your day going today?