Earthquake!
So I’m at Staples. I’m looking for a cell phone charger. The kids are both with me. Little No Limit is wearing her tattered and torn bought-it-for-a-dollar-Salvation-Army Tinker Bell costume with pink socks that have red roses and before-there-was-dirt-on-them white slip-on shoes that have those zig zag straps that Velcro. The Boy is wearing cowboy boots, athletic shorts, and a pajama shirt. Yes, I let my kids dress themselves like this. I hope one day when they see pictures they say, “How could you dress me like that?” and I will respond, “I gave you independence. You should be so lucky that I let you wear what you want, dagnabbit, did you know I walked two miles to school though snow, uphill both ways! Yes! In Florida!”
Ahem. Where was I?
So I’m at Staples. I’m looking for a cell phone charger. The kids are wandering the aisle on the other side of the cell phone chargers. I figure, they’re both loud, the store isn’t crowded. I can look over the top of the aisle and keep an eye on them.
And you know what happens?
AN EARTHQUAKE!!!!!
Seriously, can’t I get a break? Can’t I get a few minutes to look for a cell phone charger while my oddly clothed children wander the aisle on the other side? Can’t I?
At first, when I heard everything shaking, you got it: I blamed the kids.
What are they doing, I thought, fearfully imagining towers of paper clips falling over and my children standing in the middle. That happened one time at the grocery store, only it was 2 liter bottles of Coke and my dad. Which actually made it kind of funny to see a 40-something year old man in the middle of a grocery store trying to keep up the bottled sodas. Especially when two of those bottles exploded just as the store employees ran up to help.
Ahem. Where was I?
So I’m at Staples. I’m looking for a cell phone charger. The earthquake shakes things up. Everything in the store is rattling and jiggling. I realize it’s not the kids doing it. I realize it could in fact be an earthquake, or on one of the other aisles, an employee driving an in-store mechanized lifter has dropped something that literally weighed a ton, and now, I’m worried about the kids. Are they safe? Why did I let them wander the other aisle? I look over the shelf. They’re both just standing there, in a bit of a surfing stance, like hey, the ground is shaking!
The shaking ends a moment later, and everything goes back to normal.
I buy my goods, stop and get gas on the route home ($4.51/gallon, good grief), and when I get home, Husband says, “Did you feel the earthquake?”
“Yes,” I said. “I thought it was the kids at first before realizing they couldn’t be responsible for ALL that shaking.”
We laugh and then go about our business.
The End.
How’s that for an anticlimactic ending?
I think earthquakes make me lose my train of thought.
