It all started with five pats of butter; my awareness that we were not like everybody else.
I liked toast. I had simple tastes. But I wasn’t a robot. I liked butter on my toast. My mother would help me make the toast when I was younger, beginning with the toaster that burned our kitchen down. When the toast was done and sitting expectantly on a plate, Mom would reach for the butter from the fridge. With an actual butter knife, she placed five pats of butter on that dry piece of bread. One pat in each corner and a tiny one in the middle. I don’t know when it dawned on me to question this ritual. But one random day as I was watching those five tiny butter blobs melt into only a 6^th of my toast, I wished for more. I wished for a slather. I wished my toast could take a bath in that butter. Jump into the deep end. Put it on like a down jacket.

I think I even asked about it. The answer was no. We are five-pat-butter-people. We don’t slather. That stick of butter would take us all the way to high school graduation.

Other clues in the puzzle came in the form of 4 inches of bath water. We filled our tubs with 4 inches. Not an inch more. When you sat your naked self down in the water, you displaced 2 or 3 more, giving the illusion of maybe 7 inches of warm water. I think I was a married adult before I realized that some people fill the tub UP with hot water. All the way up to that second little drain that I didn’t know existed. I thought that thing was cosmetic until I was 25.

Then there was the cardboard box sled. We all know how that went. I mean.
Disposable silverware that wasn’t ever disposed of. Always washed, stored in a gallon size ziplock, and reused.
Styrofoam ice chests with pimento cheese sandwiches and rest area picnics on long road trips.
Putting $2 worth of gas in our tank, only to drive a few miles down the road to fill up where the gas was cheaper.
Guess Jeans? Please. Jordache? If you don’t get six pats of butter, you aren’t getting Jordache.

My parents were frugal. And I get it. They were children of the depression. Well, not exactly. Maybe a little. According to my mom, my dad wasn’t raised that way. We can’t even trace his back to anything.

I grew up on a nice street in Tallahassee, FL. There were two doctors and a lawyer within a child’s stone throw of my own yard. It was a nice street. I’m told it was a stretch when we bought it, but a stretch my parents gladly made without regret. What we suffered in mortgage payments, we saved on butter blobs and air conditioning. In the summertime, daytime temperatures were in the 90s, depending on whatever front was passing through. At night, it was a humid 78. We ran our AC. In the daytime. We did not run our AC at night. Almost never. Most summer nights, after darkness settled in hues of navy and gray, my mom would walk through our bedrooms and open the windows. I would watch that process like the buttering of the toast and sigh in my soul as the window unstuck itself with a groan and opened to the stale night air under duress. There was never a discussion about this. We didn’t pay the electric bills. We didn’t make electric bill decisions. But two or three times a summer, on rare occasions of extreme heat, Mom would walk through again and lower the window. And my eyes would brighten as I heard the AC kick on for the night. This was going to be a sleep to remember. I was going to get to wear clothes. And use sheets. I don’t know if there was a set of parameters or a temperature chart in place that prompted those few closed-window nights. I just knew it made me happy. And cool.

The week of Christmas, 2008, the Snapp in me collided with the White in them on a joint vacation to Gatlinburg. I knew what I was getting into with that trip. It’s not like I didn’t know. And yet, somehow I didn’t know. Somehow I entered surprising new territory. Or saw the same old territory with fresh eyes. That old white Styrofoam ice chest was a key player in the trip that week. When it wasn’t squeaking, it was somehow dictating our meals, our leftovers, or our next 30 minutes. Don’t ask me how an ice chest can have that kind of power. I don’t have a real answer to that question. Except that my mother gave it that power.

After 6 days of crowds, events, activities, and mishaps that I could write entire chapters about, that week came down to an early morning mad dash to pack up and go home. Besides packing our own bags and having them sitting by the front door, we each had a couple of community tasks to get the house ready to leave. Oddly enough, Todd and I were assigned Cooler Duty. And no one was supervising our methods or our progress. The whole thing was laced with irony. I crouched down in the tiny dim-lit kitchen and looked up at my mother, who delivered the instructions without fanfare or room for interpretation. She opened the refrigerator and waved her arm over the contents.

“This is the stuff we are taking home,” she said. “Make it fit.”

She walked away before my eyes took their fullest shape of shock. She didn’t see me questioning. She also didn’t see Todd and I look at each other. There was a manifesto in that one glance. But she didn’t read it, so we got to work. For about 36 seconds, we tried to make some Tetris magic and find creative ways to stuff that refrigerator into that cooler. We were still thinking about this when I heard my mom call out from the hall bathroom, “Make sure you get the hot dogs.” I looked at Todd again. Oh, the hot dogs. I had a mostly empty jug of milk in my left hand and a gallon sized baggie of browning iceberg lettuce in my right. I could have killed a homeless man with what I held in my hands that moment. The hot dogs were still sitting in a bag on a refrigerator shelf.

Nothing was fitting.
My mom had gotten caught up in another task.
The trash can was  a duck waddle away. Todd and I had the same thought at the same moment. I grabbed the trash can and before either of us could say “leftover hot dogs” we were chucking food into the trash with wild abandon. We had to be careful and place the food we were trashing under dirty paper towels or discarded paper plates. We had to be covert. No one could know. If our methods were discovered before we were firmly down the mountain, we’d lose our jobs and those hot dogs would be buckled into an air conditioned bucket seat of somebody’s van.

When it was all over, there was enough spare room inside that cooler to host a small dinner party. I think we even got praised for that. It really was our finest hour.

But 12 hours later, we pulled into our driveway with my parents in tow. And because we had some things in the cooler, too, that cooler came out of the back of the van with the rest of our luggage. My dad plopped it onto our kitchen counter and my mom opened it up for the first time since Todd’s and my little heist that morning. My mom put the lid aside and peered into the contents of the cooler. Her eyes darkened with confusion. Then she began moving things around. Finally, she looked over at me.

“So, where are the hot dogs?”

I made a little face that brought out all the bones in my neck and replied,

“Um, did you check under the butter?”

Indeed.

My mother, bless her heart, was a terrible photographer. The worst. I could prove this in front of a jury in a court of law. I have albums full of evidence. On Fridays, for at least a few weeks, I’ll be posting the worst of the worst from Mom’s albums.

Our first Foto Fiasco comes straight from a 1980 album page. It is a typical scene. There are many just like it. It is my brother and I posing atop someone’s final resting place. We didn’t do this by choice. We were directed. Sit there. Back to back. Smile. Look alive.

So irreverent.

In this particular photo, the real star of the show is Mom’s index finger. Our heads are not there. The words on the gravestone/monument are not legible. This is a picture of stone and knee caps.

In 1980, nothing was digital, obviously. You took pictures blindly on a tiny little point and shoot loaded with 110 film. Then, when your roll was complete, you dropped the film off to Eckerd Drugs and went back a couple of days later. Most people, upon seeing the picture of finger and knee caps, would have found the nearest trash can and tossed it in before walking out of the store. Not my mom. She put it in a prominent place in the album and proudly displayed it for 37 years.

Happy Friday.

This is the day Hallmark lives for. I used to live for Hallmark until Todd ruined it for me. Now I find myself rewriting bad dialogue in my head when the movies are playing out in front of me. Don’t get me wrong. I still watch. Just not as often or as freely. Now instead of watching with pure, unadulterated joy, it’s like sitting through a movie next to a person with bad gas. It taints the experience, for sure.

My first Valentine’s Day with Todd was altered by the death of my beloved grandmother in Tallahassee. We had plans to go up together the very weekend she died. We were in college in Tampa. She was in the hospital in Tallahassee. She was supposed to recover. They said she would recover. But she had a vain streak and didn’t want people seeing her not looking her best. She didn’t like the idea of me bringing Todd to meet her in the hospital. I was going to anyway. And so she died. By the Transitive Property in math (If a=b and b=c then a=c), I killed my grandmother.

Not really.
I hope.
But she did go out on her own terms. And she died 3 days before we could see her not looking her best.

So instead of us driving up for Todd to meet my very sweet grandmother, I climbed into the backseat of a Lincoln Towncar with my mom’s parents and drove to Tallahassee for the funeral. I was sad. I was terribly unprepared to let her go, because she was always my favorite. She was my beach grandmother. The grandmother that scolded my parents for cutting my long curls into an afro and for making me bail boats in lightning storms. The grandmother who thought bushy eyebrows were the bomb and was probably the reason I didn’t realize mine needed work until the year 2000. The grandmother who needed help crossing the creek in her “clamdiggers” as she slowly made her way down the beach to see her best friend, Aunt Catherine. The grandmother with the short, fat Christmas trees and the same old ornaments–some of them made of cardboard. The grandmother with a jar of full sized candy bars in her kitchen and cold glass-bottled cokes in her fridge. The grandmother whose snores were the stuff of nightmares, but who taught me to sleep through anything.

The grandmother who loved unconditionally and who always had time.

I think about her often. I even found her wallet and social security card in a box in my attic recently. I think about how much she would have loved her great-grandchildren. She would have reveled in the liveliness that trails behind her legacy. She would have adored that the second cousins know each other and get together when we can.

She would have loved my girls. I grew up always wanting a sister. Doesn’t every girl want a sister? I didn’t get that growing up, but I got the second best thing to it. I got to bring sisters into the world and watch them walk the occasionally dark path together, neither one willing to let the other stumble. Even though Lucy often says to me in exasperation, “Jenna is just the WORST person ever,” and at the time she truly means that. And even though Jenna has almost always done something the moment before that earns her that title, even then the love is undeniable. Two weeks ago, on the way home from school, Jenna looked at me and said, “I was thinking about Lucy today and I thought, I love her. I love her.” Right then and there, I got the sister I never had.

They fight. They give each other the stink eye. They each complain about the other. But they love. And I know that long after I’m gone, they’ll have each other. Not just on Hallmark days, but every day.

As much as I’d like life to play out like it does in Hallmark productions, it isn’t magical moments and bad dialogue. It isn’t throwing confetti when life is easy. Life is learning to love the sister who has injured you or the friend who just threw you under the bus or the spouse who doesn’t care anymore (general terms, people. Not my story). Love is action. And anyone can offer it, no matter the circumstance.

Maybe your Valentine’s Day included a death in the family and isn’t the holiday you envisioned. Maybe you don’t have a partner or a sister or a best friend. There’s always hope. There’s always someone who needs something. And in case you need a little extra help, Paul left a very simple, very bright formula to light the dark spaces of our lives.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” (I Corinthians 13:4-8)

Even when someone is just the worst person ever.
Even then. Maybe especially then.
Happy Valentine’s Day.

The other night when three of us were so sick, I googled “drunk monkey” and then “monkey taking Nyquil.” One of those two searches brought up the image that I used in my post. It wasn’t my best work. Nyquil was masking the symptoms of death that had crept into my bloodstream and were slowly taking me over.

The next day, Todd texted me.

“Are you aware of the story behind that photo you used?” he asked.

Oh no. I was not aware. At the time I posted it, I wasn’t aware of virtually anything. But I was intrigued, so I did a little research.

The monkey in the photo was named Naruto by PETA. The photo was taken in Indonesia with equipment owned by nature photographer, David Slater. He had spent quite a bit of time following this family of monkeys around, but had been unsuccessful in taking photos up close of their faces. Every time he got close, they blinked. Or balked. The pictures were bad. So he taught them how to press the buttons themselves and then left his equipment in the jungle within their range.

It wasn’t long before curiosity took hold and–you know how monkeys are–they started pushing buttons. Soon he had a few selfies on his hands. Most of them were blurry or useless. A few of them were amazing. And he published them. Because it was his idea. His Equipment. His setup.

He sold the main photo and made a little petty cash. Then he published a few of them in a book he put out.

And then PETA came along and got mad. Because, in the name of Mary Todd Lincoln, NO ONE GOT THE MONKEY’S permission to print the photo. And the monkey received no extra bananas for her million dollar smile.

Where’s the justice in that?

Well, PETA will tell you. There was no justice in that. So they gave the monkey a name and named themselves Naruto’s “Next friend.” That meant that they could act on behalf of the monkey in his legal matters. And they filed a lawsuit against David Slater, the photographer, who couldn’t even afford the plane ticket to fly back to the states and represent himself. The case became known as the “Monkey Selfie Case,” or more officially, Naruto vs. Slater. Ridiculous.

Eventually, the court threw out the case and declared that animals could not hold copyright ownership. PETA appealed and in September of 2017, both PETA and Slater agreed to a settlement. Slater agreed to donate a portion of future revenues to the preservation of the endangered species, which, by the way, he was pretty much already doing. Ludicrous.

“In April 2018, the appeals court affirmed that animals can not legally hold copyrights and expressed concern that PETA’s motivations had been to promote their own interests rather than to protect the legal rights of animals.”

Utter insanity.

I find it a little funny that the photographer asserts that the male monkey of the lawsuit, Naruto, is not even the monkey in the contested photo. The photogenic monkey was an older female named nothing by nobody and she doesn’t have a lawyer. She’s off in the lush green trees of Indonesia enjoying the spoils of the American legal system.

And that’s what I get for googling drunk monkey.

camp·ing

/ˈKAMPing/nnoun: camping

1. the activity of spending a vacation living in a camp, tent, or camper.”visitors can go camping in the vast wilderness surrounding the mountains”

famp·ing

/ˈFAMPing/noun: famping

1. The activity of fake camping, in a lodge, hotel, motel, hostile, or other shanty with subpar mattresses and pillows, electricity, and indoor plumbing. “Friends can go famping in the woods of Brooksville, FL at Lakewood Retreat.

Last night I slept on a mattress purchased in the 60s. With one pillow. ONE PILLOW. At home, I sleep with 3 pillows every night, each one serving a different purpose and part of my body. Last night I attempted to mold pillows out of bath towels and body fat and still came up feeling like I had lost a game of Twister. The pillow I did have was so flat that it did nothing to span the gap between my shoulder and the bed. It could not meet me halfway. And to cap off the whole luxurious story, my daughter’s phone alarm went off at 7:15 this morning, telling me to feed her fish. Back home.

Every November for many years, we camped with a large group of our friends at Fort DeSoto State Park. Some of us in tents, some in RVs. From year to year it varied. In ways, it was glorious. The campfire talk at night, listening to the kids laugh on the playground, walking to the ice cream parlor with friends. But let’s be honest, I spent most of that time scrubbing the previous meal from the bottom of the cast iron pot we brought with us. I’d look over my shoulder to follow the trail of laughter to the playground and see them tossing their hair as they zipped down the slide. So carefree. Then I’d turn back to the inch-thick layer of dried grits and watch as my sweat dripped into the hose water I was using to scrub the pot.

Where’s the fun in that?
For the adults?

We got smarter as the years went by and figured out that real camping was for the birds. And the cowboys. And the campers. Not for us. We could still have all the glories of camping with none of the hassles. So we found a campground that was established in 1965 and hasn’t changed in the 54 years it’s been operating. We rented a ranch-style lodge with all original mattresses and very flat pillows and a long back porch that stretches the length of the building. Most of our time is spent playing games on the porch and chatting while rocking in our Amish rockers. At 8:30, 12:30, and 6, you can find us in the dining hall, eating food prepared for us by hardworking employees of the campground. And when our grits are mostly eaten, the last of the grit balls clinging to the bowl from which we supped, we place the bowl on the counter, where another nice person washes them for us. And then we walk outside to play shuffleboard, or four square, or human foosball. Or we sit in hammocks that are slung from a group of towering pines and we swing in the gentle breeze. From the porch, I can hear the voices of my children talking as they walk toward the game room or off to the next activity that is not coordinated by me.

I hear people disparaging the F in Famping. I can assure you there’s nothing fake in the fun I had playing four square with people from 3 separate generations. There’s nothing fake about the frolicking between the lodge and the dining hall. And there’s nothing fake in the festivity of these lifelong friendships.

I hear people talking about the glories of camping. Go ahead. I hear ya. Pitch your tent. Fight the racoons for the Doritos bag in your plastic bin at midnight. Thaw your bacon in the community bathroom sink before you fry it over your open fire. Talk it up. Wipe the sweat from your brow as you talk it up.

It’s all fun and games until someone has to wash a pot.

Well.
If I were grading myself on keeping it interesting Monday-Friday, I’d give myself a tentative C-. Below average, but clinging to hope. And as far as diet and exercise go, I’d grade me at a D-, very precariously about to utterly fail. But I’m not depressed or deterred or defeated. Because at some things this week I have knocked an A+ out of the park. Just today I have:

• Become a boss at digital sprinklers
• Dragged a kid to the doctor to watch her test positive for Flu A
• Talked to 7 different people about grass and sprinklers
• Done 6 loads of laundry
• Prepared a wholesome meal (chick fil a app)
• Walked the dog 3 times and made 3 school runs
• Taken Nyquil.

I don’t have original thoughts in my head at this hour. And when I did have thoughts in my head that might have passed for original, I was playing the sprinklers like a video game.

So maybe I don’t have an A in some important subjects, but there’s time and room for improvement. And I have friends making As. You know who’s making an A right now? Nyquil. That guy is something else.

G’night.

My life isn’t hard. I am a reasonably healthy, middle class American, with 4 children who tolerate me differently depending on the day and the circumstance. I do have horizontal lines etched in my forehead like a bad paper jam, giving me a semi-permanent look of confused anger, but it’s not so bad that I’ve yet researched Botox.

But still. Life is life. And sometimes it sits down on me. Sometimes other people sit down on me. Some of those people are fatter than others. Some of the things poking me are sharper than others. And sometimes I just get tired.

But life isn’t usually about big survival moments or big victories. At least mine isn’t. Life is about surviving all the little things that pile up around me. It’s about worming out from under what sat down on me, whether I gave it permission to or not. It gets a little harder as the challenges become emotional. Or daily. Or chronic. Or out of my control. What do I do with the kid on the sidewalk who’s crying about hating school? And the bickering between teen brothers who understand respect for others but don’t apply it to each other? And all the people I encounter in a day who make decisions that impact me, even negatively, but over whom I have no control or influence? And the 103 degree fever that threatens to unravel a week’s plans?

What about that stuff?

Well, that stuff needs a little first aid kid. A toolbox. And that toolbox needs tools. I’m pretty awkward with packing the toolbox. None of it comes naturally to me. Fortunately, these things can be taught. Eventually, I become desperate enough to learn. The tool I use obviously depends upon the situation. I wouldn’t use a hammer to apply paint or a brillo pad to tighten a screw. So the tricks I pull are closely related to the crisis at hand. Because this week is all about high fevers and night terrors, I’m too tired to talk about all the tools at once. So tonight, I’m rooting around for the first tool. Just one.

Tool #1: THE ART OF DISTRACTION:

Lately, my youngest has been worrying about everything from who left school after vomiting to the color of the smudge on her shoes. She’s been a little stressed out. Sometimes stress is irrational. Sometimes it’s perfectly rational, but not immediately curable. But if you can’t escape the problem and you can’t change the problem, look away. Think about something else. If you can’t change your circumstance, change your mind.

I stink at this. So much. I don’t think this way. When a kid is freaking out on my watch, I am much more likely to freak out alongside them (“ALL IS RUINED!”) than to point them to a better way of thinking. Fortunately, this one can be learned by careful observation of people who do it well. And even more fortunately, my husband has this skill mastered. I watch him like a stalker.

Last week, my youngest hadn’t slept well and didn’t want to go to school. She was whimpering on the way to school, so I suggested we start a chain poem. I would suggest a word or phrase, she would try to add a rhyme to it, and we’d keep going until we had something. Here’s what we came up with in a half mile drive:

There once was a bear with E coli in his hair
And he had red shoes and he liked the blues
One day a woodchuck sat on a frito
And the frito broke.

I am not the one who added E coli to the poem. Jenna is obsessed with deadly diseases. I did put the E coli in the bear’s hair to make it rhyme. I also am not the one who put the unrhymable frito on the tail end of a line. It was actually working pretty well–we were both laughing–until she realized something she had left at home and started wailing again.

So I put that tool back in my toolbox and drove home.

Boo.

Dear Jenna,

Today is your 11^th birthday. You are our Grand Finale. Our Swan Song. Our Camel’s Straw. You’ve been told that you were a BIG surprise. From that, you’ve interpreted that you were an accident. It is a joke around the house. And while it’s true you were a huge surprise to me (HUGE), I think it’s far truer that you were 100% planned. By God. You were and are a miracle.

As you complete your 11^th year on earth today, here are 11 things you need to know about you:

1. You were allergy tested before you turned 1. You tested as highly allergic to every food except three: chicken, lamb, and white potatoes. I cried all way home from that appointment because you were going to starve and so was I. On your first birthday, we had a party and you ate a banana in place of the cake you couldn’t eat. You were allergic to the banana too, but less so than cake.
2. At 20 months, you discovered Sharpies and repainted the house black. It only took you 6 minutes to do it. Walls, tile floors, carpets, kitchen table. You colored everything you could contact in the 6 minutes it took me to put away a small stack of laundry.
3. At 2, Grandmama and Granddaddy named you The Destroyer. You broke more glass trinkets in a year than I have broken in a lifetime.
4. You sing like a canary but your expression never matches. When you sing, you look angry and vengeful. People are frightened. Maybe you have more of a radio face.
5. You were so easy in so many ways. Potty training was not one of those. It was a nightmare fit for a docuseries. Potty training you was an emotionally jarring, deeply scarring process. This can only mean one thing for you: you are in for it when I’m old and in my own set of diapers.
6. You are funny. Very funny. Funny to adults and kids alike. You can play creative social games with adults and keep up like you own the joint. You will get funnier as you age and I look forward to being in the front row of whatever performance you are commanding.
7. You are creative. Always thinking of your next poem or story or song.
8. #7 causes a lot of mess trails in my house. I can always tell what type of project you have going, where the project started, and where it ended right before you got up and thoughtlessly walked away from it. You should never try to commit a felony unless prison time is your goal. You’ll get caught by the trail you leave.
9. You are my most snuggly child. You put up with whatever I toss at you, almost never rejecting me because you are tired or grumpy. That takes away about 1/3 of the pain of potty training you. Maybe we can negotiate forgiveness of the other 2/3.
10. You get away with far more than you should. This is my fault, not yours. Still don’t commit a felony. Because of the trail.
11. You are equal parts anxious and confident. You are absolutely fearless in putting yourself out there or being alone or trying new things. You are absolutely terrified of vomiting, or anything even 6 degrees removed from it. Tonight as you were going to bed you said that you are never going to be fixed. To that I say, you will be helped, but you don’t need fixing. You are amazing as you are.

I wasn’t young and fresh-faced when I had you, a fact you remind me of whenever you start doing graduation math or wedding math or anything of the like. And it wasn’t my idea to have my two youngest children be 18 months apart. But if I’ve learned only one thing in life, it’s this: God’s ideas are perfect. And you were His idea. Clearly. So tonight, I celebrate you in all your peculiar glory. Happy Birthday. I hope you enjoyed your banana.

Love,

Mom

My life has been riddled with catastrophes. Some of them I walked into unwittingly. Some I caused. Some are exaggerated for the sake of a bonfire tale. Some you can’t exaggerate enough. There was a sizable one when I was 2 and another when I was 10. The first of them was definitely not my fault. The second, well, it was also definitely not my fault, though perhaps slightly harder to prove.
All I will have to do is tell the story. 
None of it was my fault.
You’ll see.

In September 1973, I was 2 years old. I was closer to 3 really, but still very much an unlicensed driver. My online dating profile might have read something like: Great smile, speaks broken English, recently potty trained, enjoys cuddling, good fine motor skills, especially good with busy boxes.

Who even knows what a busy box is anymore? Now our 2-year-olds can swipe at Netflix and bring up the latest episode of Daniel Tiger. Then, we swiped at busy boxes that had plastic levers and rotating knobs and dials. I had the Kohner 1971 Busy Box. I could drive that thing like a herd of cattle. My parents knew this. After all, they provided me with it. I didn’t have a job.

For a toddler, I was skilled. Sometimes people underestimated my skills. One Wednesday night in particular, I was severely underestimated. And for a 4 minute period, I was also severely undersupervised.

We were trying to leave for church. As usual, I was the only one ready, waiting around for the others to get their junk together. The car had been having some engine troubles, so my dad had started it, popped and propped the hood, and left it idling so it would be good to go. My mom was trying to help my brother get his shoes on and my dad ran back in the house for the BIbles. I was standing on the front lawn waiting. Waiting.

Then I saw the car there. It was idling–waiting just like I was. My legs were kinda tired. I was carrying a little extra weight in the thighs at the time. That vinyl seat looked cozy. But that’s not what really attracted me. The real attraction was the steering wheel. I loved me a good steering wheel. I didn’t know what was taking them so long, but I climbed into the front seat to wait them out in comfort. I was shorter than the average adult, so I had to get on my knees to see over the steering wheel. Even on my knees there was nothing to see, as the raised hood was blocking my view of the house. Still no family. I put my hands at 10 and 2 and pretended to head into town, taking the corners nice and slow. But nothing was really happening and after a couple of minutes, my busy box instincts kicked in. I reached for the gears.

These days, a 2 year old reaching for gears isn’t going to get them far. Your foot has to press the brake to set a lever in motion. In 1973, all you had to have was one free hand and some gumption. I had both. I put my left hand at 12 o’clock and wrapped my right hand around the cool plastic of the knob that was sitting in Park. If they weren’t going to come to me, I could go to them. With a downward yank on the lever, I put my simple plan into motion. It had been idling high for 10 minutes, so the sage green Buick lurched forward with awkward power, racing through the boxwood bushes that were trying to line the sidewalk and hopping the 6 inch lip of the porch with ease. From there, it was a short journey through the plate glass window. I don’t remember the impact, but I’m told it sounded like a train wreck. My mother dropped my brother’s shoe and came running. My father dropped the stack of Bibles and came running. My brother stayed right where he was and screamed loud enough to be heard over the shattering glass. I climbed out of the car, with the door still open, and was walking circles on the lawn crying.

They thought I was dead.

Of course I wasn’t.

Only the plate glass window was dead. And the hood of the Buick. And maybe the boxwoods.

When they found me most definitely alive, they scooped me up and celebrated. And when the celebration settled down from the panic, my dad gave up all hope of making it to church and rifled around for the Insurance Company’s contact info. I’ll bet that was a fun call to make.

Insurance Guy: Wait, WHO was driving the car?
Dad: Our daughter was.
Insurance Guy: Sir, your daughter isn’t listed on your policy as a driver.
Dad: I know that. She’s 2. It was an accident. She doesn’t drive.
Guy: Toddler, driving. (he was muttering while writing in his file)

I never saw my 1971 Kohner Busy Box again. Maybe it was because my Dad threw it out, deeming it too dangerous to my development. Maybe it was because I outgrew it, having tasted the raw power of a real gear in a revved Buick. Either way, Insurance Guy replaced the windows, but not the bushes, and raised their premium, citing Gross Neglect and Child Endangerment with a Motorized Vehicle.

I made that last part up, but I know for a fact that I was cleared of all wrong doing. It’s all the in the file.

It was definitely not my fault.

Dear Shop-Vac,

Wednesday night we had a cataclysmic toilet flooding event in our home.
You were there for us.
Well, almost.
Sort of.
I truly believe you wanted to be.

I’m going to tell you the story and give you a chance to improve your products for the next toilet-flooded family. Please do so quickly, as the next family might not be so lucky.

We had only been home from church for a few minutes when I started trying to route the girls to bed. Lucy, who is still only 12, seems to think she’s earned a free-for-all bedtime. I feel lucky when she’s down by 9:30. Jenna goes to sleep at 8:30 but when you don’t get home until 8:20, you can be sure 8:30 won’t happen. People were meandering toward the upstairs. I remembered that I had washed Jenna’s sweatshirt and it was in the attic where we have a makeshift laundry room. I went toward the attic and as I was walking down the hall, I heard water running in the hall bath. It seemed like an unusual instance of water running. It wasn’t a bath or shower. It sounded like Brady washing his hands. Brady is the cleanest person in the house. But his door was cracked and he was sitting on the side of his bed looking at his phone. No one was in the bathroom running water. And yet, water was running.

“What’s the sound?” I asked Brady, feeling a little panicked all of a sudden. “What’s the water source?” Brady got up to check his bathroom, while I walked around the corner of my room into my adjoining bathroom. I didn’t have to form the words twice, because I stepped into ankle deep water in my bathroom. The toilet had overflowed and a kiddie pool was forming in my room. Holy cow. I screamed for Brady to go get his dad.

“He’s in the shower,” he answered.

“Get him out. Tell him the bathroom is flooding.” I turned off the water behind the toilet, which at least stopped the water level from rising further. Then I went running. Like a gazelle, I ran. Like a gazelle in the Olympics. It was truly spectacular how fast I moved. I ran downstairs, into the garage, grabbed two shop vacs and was back in my bathroom in just seconds. Meanwhile, as I ran through the dining room, double fisting my shop vacs, I heard more water. My dining room had become the Rainforest Café.

“Jenna, find water. Get pots. Mop dining room!’ Jenna is 10. But she was a rock star during our fiasco. I kept moving.  Every time I passed a kid in the hall, I yelled out, “Who used my toilet?!” Upstairs, a massive operation was underway to suck up the water that was flowing onto the dining room table below. I was sucking up water with the shop vacs, towels, paper towels. The dog. Loofahs. Anything I could find. When the towels became too wet, I tossed them into the bathtub and started fresh.

Jenna was downstairs doing her magic. I never saw any of that, because I was on upstairs duty. Todd was working on the toilet clog that had caused Bacteria Splash 2019. We aren’t going to talk about that. Ever. No one has confessed. Some truths are better left buried. Deeply.

But, Shop-Vac, here’s where I want to get serious. Personal. Eye-to-eye. Here’s where you let me down.

Your CORD.

Your CORD. Please. What in the world? Your cord is less than 5 feet long. And unless you have an outlet on the floor, which 99% of the shop-vaccing word does not, you use 3 of the feet getting from the bathroom counter to the floor. That left me with about 20 inches of cord. At one point, I actually got trapped between your machine and my wall, by a cord that was literally shorter than some of my boot strings.

Is it 5 feet to keep from choking the babies? Babies don’t hang out where shop-vacs are stored and–news flash–5 feet of cord can still choke a baby. Maybe not a very, very obese baby, but come on, man. There’s no logic behind your short cord. And man, when my bathroom is raining sewage onto my dining room table, I need a longer cord.

After a very intense 90 minutes, I was leaning up against the kitchen counter to decompress when my 17-year-old son walked in to get a bowl of cereal. He pulled the milk out of the fridge and casually said,

“What was going on in here tonight?”

“Are you kidding? Just a massive flood from the upstairs bathroom down to the dining room. A fat lot of help you were!” I answered. I wasn’t really serious.

“Well, I’m sorry,” he said in a tone of indignant defense. “Nobody said a word to me.”

“Did you not hear Brady running through the house screaming for Daddy?” I asked.

“Someone goes running through the house—esPECially Brady–yelling a name that isn’t mine, followed by a whole bunch of commotion. How is that different from every other day? That happens daily around here,” Andrew argued. I paused and thought through his statement.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I conceded. And he was.

It stinks to be us sometimes.

In summation, Shop-vac, thanks for sucking (water) and longer cord, please. Maybe go crazy and do a retractable. Soon.

Carry on,

missy