I have no idea where to start

Monday, July 25, 2011

Ok, so what subject should I start with? The hot, humid weather and my overcooked hormone casserole, or another skunk story?

How about a descriptor of when I pulled raisins out of the baby’s nostril, or how stupid I felt when I drove “Big John” into the creek, or maybe some excerpts from my long-winded conversation with an ancient air compressor I recently attempted to haul across my yard against its will.

I have no idea where to start. There’s no idea famine here in my neck of the woods—and I presently concur—as the famous slogan for Morton Salt so smartly suggests, “when it rains it pours.”

For starters I’m still recovering from two adventures involving multiples of grandchildren under the age of six.

Clearly I have forgotten how much work it is to be the only supervising adult amongst the scamper and scurry of little people. All I can say is that unleashing my wee kin in the toy department is like a game of billiards—they scatter like the break shot after the eight ball, and burst out in all directions. I am loathed to admit that only the bribe to get French fries was what reeled all of them back in.

And because I couldn’t manage to keep them all sitting down at the restaurant, I decided to place the little sprites in twos and threes in shopping carts and cruise the store aisles with them relatively sequestered as they munched on their tasty treat.

All was well until a little voice belonging to a two year old, who also was holding the paper bag that contained my French fries said,” I think I’m gonna throw up,” opened said bag and barfed inside.

That was the first adventure.

The second one was the race, while pushing one cart and pulling the other, to find a garbage can before the bottom fell out of the wet paper bag.

Running through that store with five kids in carts and a bag of barf was a cartoon strip right out of “For Better or Worse.” I was Elly Patterson, my eyes as big as saucers, and the look on my face was pure dread. But I made it.

In contrast, a recent road trip to Winnipeg with my grandson Adam, his one year old brother Charlie, and, thankfully, their mother, has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have no idea where to start when trying to explain to a five year old just how long it’s going take it get to the big city.

As we left Fort Frances, Adam was buckled in the back seat of the car with a Nintendo DS, an IPod, earphones, and a yummy little package of donut holes from the local bakery which he was not to show to his baby brother, who was not allowed to have any.

“I’m bored,” he said, as we cruised through Devlin.

“Is this Winnipeg?” he asked.

We were at Emo.

And then Charlie spotted the donuts.

Four hours later we’d reached the big city and Charlie had quit crying and fallen asleep about five minutes before we parked at the mall. Thank goodness for umbrella strollers and sippy cups both of which soothed the unhappy toddler as we traveled the mall.

Adam, on the other hand, was keen to explore the wonderful wide world of retail. He had both arms outstretched as we went down the store aisles and his fingers like magnets, drew everything off the shelves for a solid mile.

I glanced away once from the little Tasmanian Devil and when I turned back around he was holding the lid from a china teapot—the sales tag dangling and twirling from a little string on the knob top. It read $549.00.

I wanted to throw down a black portable hole and jump in. I managed to rescue the teapot and save my life savings while suppressing my urge to drag the poor child like a rag doll out of the store.

We steered clear of anything fragile and headed for the escalator in the middle of the mall. Adam had never seen nor been on such a machine before.

I thought it was my chance to show him something really neat, until three quarters of the way up the magic staircase my imagination got the best of me as I pictured his flip flop sandal sliding under the revolving step at the top and sucking the poor child in with it like a scene from a Bugs Bunny Cartoon.

But I held myself back and let him step off on his own. He glanced up at me with that wide-eyed wonderful all encompassing smile and said, “Wow! That was so cool, Granny! Can we do it again?”

Those rides up and down the escalator that afternoon were so much fun—and to explain in words how much I felt like a kid again—well, I have no idea where to start.