A Mom's Best gift does not a Writer Make

Yesterday, we had to take two children to two different schools at two different starting times for two crucial standardized tests.  We also were scheduled for a 2:30 mass for First Communion and my daughter had a 10 o'clock hair appointment.   The night before, I'd asked, "Do you have your pencils?  Your I.D?  Your calculator?" and my mom had stressed checking where the test was, as my brother once upon a time had been scheduled at a test site 20 miles away.  Still, this was new territory, and our crash test son has now paved the way for his siblings. 

After my husband departed with the two test takers, I received a phone call.  It was 8 in the morning.  "Does our son need any papers to get into the S.A.T?" his father asked.

Our oldest had gone into the building while his sister noted countless other children with more organized or seasoned parents marching into the school holding pieces of paper.  One girl had come out very upset, saying they wouldn't allow her to take the test.  My husband and I both knew our son had no such sheet and I hadn't even thought of it.

I clicked on the website thinking, "Why didn't you check this last night Sherry?  Why didn't you look?" and then, "Why didn't my son look?" and then, "Why didn't I ask my son to look?"  and filed it under, "Next time."

Yes, it said he needed his admissions ticket and that if I logged in, I could  print it up.  If I could get over to the high school in 17 minutes...if I could just find the sheet.  But I couldn't log in. I knew my son's user name. I was uncertain of the password so I tried my emails but alas, I'd deleted 27,000 old emails on the theory I did not need them; so I tried to log onto my son's email. He'd changed the password.  Knowing he did comic heros as a rule, I began typing.  I hoped it wouldn't be an obscure member of the Avengers. After ten minutes of searching, I discovered I'd been logging into the S.A.T. with his name in lower case, and it needed to be upper case and I'd known the password all along. Dragging the laptop to the printer, I loaded with paper and of course had to deal with two paper jams before the necessary document was in my hot nervous stressed out hands

Our son had already turned off his phone so we had no way of contacting him and his dad had left to take our daughter to her site and so it was all on me.  Fortunately, my parents are visiting so they could babysit or this insane errand would be completely untenable.  Now, it was barely managable if I bent the rules of space and time.  I'd go in my t-shirt and pj pants.  It was 8:15.  Test started at 8:30.  I just might make it. 

12 passenger vans are not built for speed.  But I prayed and lo, I hit every green light.  There was no traffic, I watched the clock mercilessly tick down the minutes until test time.  My son called.  His voice oddly not stressed, he asked why we'd left five phoned messages between his sister, his father and me when he was getting ready to take the S.A.T.   "You need your admission ticket." I explained.  He said, "I'm already in the room.  I was just getting ready to turn off my phone, I'd had it on silence."  I was a block from the school. 

Getting to the parking lot, I wondered, "What now?" If I went home, some administrator would demand to see my son's papers.  I knocked on the door and a gracious but weary security woman radioed to the staff running the gig.  They didn't need it.    Stand down red alert.  So now I drove home in the anti-climatic unhero of a stressful morning with no reward for the sacrifice or meaning.

"It might make a good blog entry." my mom quipped as she finished up breakfast for the littles.

True.  But now I'm personally praying for Writer's block.

Jack Bauer vs. Moms of America

Because the series "24" is coming to an end, this piece will lose it's humor shortly after the show loses its shelf life.  As such, it is time for a rerun because these babies will never be found on a best of DVD.

The running gag/conceit on “24” is that Jack Bauer never gets to do anything to maintain himself, eating, sleeping, using the bathroom, showering. He's always on the go.

Big deal.

Moms have been enduring this sort of relentless timed to the second hard press scheduling for years. Every fall, if you just look at the mini-vans lined up after school you’ll find not one but multiple examples of women talking on their cell phone while writing in a calendar, skimming and signing papers and providing two or more minors with the specialized equipment they’ll need for their afternoon activities, along with a snack. That’s all in the fifteen minutes they’re stuck in the slug line waiting to drive away from the school.

Jack Bauer searches through a myriad of places to find the stash of weapons or suspect or bomb he needs to find with mere moments to spare.

Yawn.

Try finding three pairs of clean white socks from the laundry for children who forgot to lay out their stuff the night before, while fixing five lunches, making sure each gets their breakfast and has their backpacks, lunches, diorama’s, permission slips and gym clothing for the day all before 7:30 am. Also, please remember to take out the garbage, remove the two bikes from the driveway and the car’s on E.

Jack Bauer sometimes resorts to unethical methods of getting information.

Hah! Like we mothers didn’t see that one coming. In the afternoon, after casually offering to charge the eldest’s cell phone, we check the numbers in and out. Moms specialize in benevolence that masks other motives. “I noticed you put your hair back yesterday in a pony tail, it looked nice.” Is mom code for “Your hair looks like the body of an emu, please find a brush and attack it at once!”

Intrigue and espionage? Please, moms invented it. Most mothers usually have more than one child who is a good mole for kid information, both about school and domestic issues. Some have been known to switch the baby monitor to other rooms, helpfully hidden under a pile of laundry, the ultimate camouflage. We conduct unauthorized search and seizure raids to evict illegal television watchers during homework time, and have special vice units (Dads) for serial offenders.

Jack Bauer doesn’t recognize proper authorities in some situations. He often deals with apparently cataclysmic explosions. He uses his wits to survive.

The parents of adolescents everywhere are nodding their heads at this one. We cope with unexpected emotional teen age equivalent of land mines at any waking moment, and must disarm them without so much as a paperclip or a welding rod. We do not recognize opening a locked door within our own home as breaking and entering, we monitor incoming and outgoing email, phone conversations and do background checks on all personal contacts. The HSA has nothing on us!

Jack Bauer has never been known to sleep or use the facilities in the course of a vigorous 24 hours. Parents do this on a regular basis, or irregular, depending upon your meaning. As an aside, all our 24 hours are vigorous, or at the very least, exhausting.

Jack Bauer still hasn’t eaten.

While abstaining from food might help with never getting to use a public restroom, most parents, even Jack's find it isn’t a healthy habit. Just as surely as Jack gets terrorists to spill the beans, we could make Jack eat them. Moms and Dads everywhere, say it with me, “You sit down and you’re not moving until everything on that plate is gone!”