This morning, they finally both got out of the house (I'm telelworking today) and I settled in hoping for a quiet day because I woke up with a killer headache. Just before eight, the garage door opened. Scared the holy crap out of me, because the kid should have been arriving at school about then, and the man should have long since been at the office. Unfortunately, I was in the pretty little girls room when the door opened, and the only mechanism of self defense was a half empty roll of toilet paper, a jar of liquid soap, and a towel. Armed with the soap (I could aim the pump at the intruder's eyes, blinding him with cocoa butter additives) I opened the bathroom door just as the door to the garage opened, and the husband hollered, "It's just me." They were cooking lunch at his office today, and since he's the boss, he had to go to the store on his way in to get the food. After leaving there, he realized he forgot tomato paste, so he stopped back home to get a can. It served to show me though, that soap in the eyes would not necessarily work as an effective weapon, because if the intruder wore glasses, it would just smear the eyewear up and not harm the intruder.
Can of tomato paste in hand,the man left, and looking at the clock, I started getting nervous about the kid. He always texts when he gets there, and he was about 20 minutes late. Just as I picked up my cell to check on him I got a text: "here. people drive stupid. getting breakfast at e's and going to class.' I thanked him for letting me know he was safe, and wished him a good day. I went back to my own office work (which had not being going smoothly before the two interruptions.) An hour and 15 minutes later I get another text from the kid" 'lost my keys. turning in math homework, telling professor, and going looking for them.
Gee, that shouldn't be too hard....there are only 27,000 students on campus, and it's only one key. I texted back that if he didn't find them, I'd get the spares and drive to Lawrence with them. Over the next 30 minutes, the texts kept coming, each one angrier than the last. They might be in his car. He had to go back and get something and doesn't remember them after that. They could be on the bus he was on. They could be in his dorm room because he stopped in there for a minute. My thought, although I didn't say it with him in the mood he was in) was that since he carried them in his pocket on a 700 foot lanyard trailing like a kite tail, someone grabbed them when he passed by and they were out joyriding the Kansas prairies or commiting heinous felonies in my son's new Civic. For the next 20 minutes, while I saw that scenario going down, the kid keeps texting about the stupid slow campus bus driver, the people taking too long to get on and off the bus, and the state his room was in when he stopped in earlier.
The texts stop. I try to get some more work done. New text. "they were in car. car not locked. i was lucky." No shit Sherlock. You didn't lock your brand new car with probably $200 worth of CD's, your iPod, and the set of loud bass speakers you saved for two years to get? I kept my mouth (and texting fingers) shut and agreeed, yes he was lucky. He hopped the bus and then went back to the class he was missing. I went back to work.
An hour and a half ago, when he should have been in the last 30 minutes of his last class of the day, I hear those loud speakers boomboom their way through the neighborhood, become silent in front of my house, followed by the garage door opening again. Five feet eight inches of sheer anger plow into the house, the backpack gets flung to the floor and he starts ranting. Traffic, late to class, professor lectured him on tardiness, dropped lunch plate in cafeteria, hat blew off head and run over by bus, broken date, fell off curb and pulled hamstring...the litany of mishaps went on and on, finishing with bank account had $1 and his gas light came on just as he entered the neighborhood.
Mind you, it was all personal. Life was against him, and only him. It was out to get him while everyone else was having a hunky dory time. I just looked at him and quoted Mark Knopfler - some days you're the windshield, some days you're the bug. Then I told him it was Friday the 13th. He was walking up the stairs to his room when I said those things. He slipped and fell, pulling the hamstring further. He started ranting and raving even more, telling me I had no idea what it was like to have such a bad day, and it seemed like it was becoming my fault.
During a break for breath, I looked at him and said, "Well, I have to go to your grandfather's and stepgrandmother's tonight for dinner with my brothers."
He surrendered immediately. "You win. My life is great."
I'm still trying to figure out an out for myself.
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