I’ve had a few cars since having kids. First was the jeep, way back from my single days; followed by a midsize SUV, the inevitable minivan, and now I drive what my dad affectionately refers to as the people-mover: an extra-large SUV. And I’m not going to lie to you – it probably looks like we’re living out of it. There’s likely chicken nuggets with offspring buried somewhere under the 3rd row. I once found a fruit fly trap a necessity in my car. There’s probably a dirty diaper stuffed somewhere, and if I were you, I wouldn’t drink the “lemonade” out of the water bottle. In one bail-out, as I like to call them, I found FORTY-SEVEN individual socks. But I like to think of myself as a positive person, so I’ve found the silver lining: my car would be amazing in an apocalypse. Should my world enter a state of emergency – I have the necessities. There’s a snack medley in the diaper bag, a half-eaten apple in the cup holder, cheerios under the car seat, the Gatorade from last week’s ball game, yesterday’s coffee, enough extra sweatshirts for a third world country–and of course, socks.
Let me tell you a little story about last Friday. Actually, rewind to Thursday. When I was WINNING and cleaned my car. Organized all the extras outside the car wash – toys here, laundry there, trash out, vacuum, wash, the whole shebang. When I got back home the toys and laundry went inside, and the car felt new again. Such a great feeling. Back to Friday morning. I’ll walk you through it. Kids in the car – check. 12 minute drive to school – check. And then it happens – the shoe drops… literally. I pull up to the curb, cue the commotion, followed by the admission that my kindergartener has NO SHOES ON. NO SHOES?! How does that happen? He thought they were in the car. Really, he can’t be faulted. 9 times out of 10, his shoes are indeed in the car. After I got my heart rate up with some frustrated “discussion”, we doubled back and got him to school only 18 minutes late. Of course, a signature was required for the tardy, and I left “shoes” in the memo. I’ll just let the administration marinate on that.
So the moral of the story is, of course, to embrace the chaos that is the apocalypse car. Because truth be told, the tardy would have been saved with the extra pair of shoes that were pinched behind the double stroller just the day before. Perhaps I can find a happy medium between “good as new” and “condemnable”. But until then, I’ll settle for the absence of “strange funk that cannot be identified”.