A New Kindred Spirit

Do you ever just lose it? I mean really frickin’ lose it. It can appear to be nothing, but it’s just that damn proverbial straw and you just can’t take it anymore. Well… it happened tonight. Those who know me are probably laughing or are horrified. I can get a good rant going. Cussing, hollering, arms flailing, pacing… it’s not pretty.

I get home from karate and I hear Son#1 say, “Mom, we gotta run to the store and buy me some boots. Lace up boots.”

Wha?

Come to find out, there is a field trip tomorrow to ‘The Little Red School House’ located at Phipps Park it dates back to 1865, and the kids are supposed to dress in period clothing. Sure, they sent home a packet of stuff a couple weeks ago. At the top was the permission slip. I signed it and sent it back in. The next two pages were history of The Little Red School House and at that point, my eyes glazed over and I tossed it aside.

Like I really give a rat’s ass about the history of The Little Red School House (hereby known as TLRSH). Don’t get me wrong. It’s cool. It really is. But I have too much crap going on in my life to sit down and read about stuff that is completely irrelevant to my here and now and TLRSH fits right in there as far as irrelevancy.

Flash forward to now, I call a fellow Mom in a fit. I’ve known her for 5 years. She is sweet. Really sweet. She runs Bible studies for Catholic women. She’s also the Mother of my son’s best friend from school and the mother of two boys. The conversation went something like this… almost exclusively one sided:

Me: Did you know they have to f----ing dress up for this f----ing field trip?

Mom: Yeah, he told me and there was this packet of papers.

Me, wigging out big big big: A packet of papers?! What packet of papers is this? (I am now scrounging around my counters at the piles of school papers we have. Don’t ask. I have a clear mind, but the clutter has to go somewhere. It goes on my counters.)

Mom: It came with the permission slip…

Me: You.have.got.to.be.f---ing.kidding.me. That packet of papers?! There was relevant sh— in there? I tossed it aside. I can’t f---ing believe this. I read the cover and thought, “I don’t have time for this sh—“ and I tossed it.

Mom: This dressing thing is supposed to be kind of important…

Me, cutting her off: If it’s so f---ing important you’d think they’d send a damn note home saying something like, “And remember, period costumes”. And WTF is this about Boots? Boots?! He’s wearing his f---ing tennis shoes.

Mom: He doesn’t own any other shoes that tennis shoes?

Me: Hell No. He’s a BOY! I’m lucky he WEARS SHOES!

Mom: Whew. I thought I was the only one whose kids only wore tennis shoes…

Me: Hell NO. This sucks. You know, this really sucks. I can’t believe this…

And on it went. Heh.

I get off the phone and my husband says, ‘You shouldn’t have talked like that to her. She’s a nice woman.”

Evidently I’m not. Surprise.

My reply was something like, “I’ve known her for 5 years. I’m not changing for anyone. If she can’t handle it, screw it.” And I walked off to put the costume together. We improvised and he is wearing trousers tucked into black soccer socks so they look like knickers. He has a corduroy long sleeved shirt with a collar. And a belt. There you go. He is happy. I’m happ…ier. Still kind of pissed.

An hour later my phone rings. I’m taking home Mom’s son from school tomorrow, just dropping him off. She said to me, “You do not know how you made my day.”

Me: How in the world could I make your day? I completely freaked.

Mom: Because you showed me I’m not the only one who completely loses it. I’m not the only Mom out there who finally can take no more and just f---ing freaks out.

She actually said the F word.

So much for worrying. We then talked for another hour, commiserating about the things that go on in our lives and how sometimes we just want to scream. And… some days we do.