The other day I dropped Little A. off at tae kwon do as usual, then headed to the bus stop to pick up S. I checked email as I waited in my car, content with my five-minute break in a busy afternoon. All was well.
The bus pulled up; the students piled out. Judging by the
look on her face, S. had a decent day. All was still well.
She opened the door, plopped in the car, and started
talking—because she never stops. She probably talked all the way from the bus
to the car, I just couldn’t hear her. My brain started the familiar, “Oh, sweet
powers that be, I can’t follow this—the speed, the randomness. I. Just. Can’t.”
Following quickly behind came the equally familiar, “Don’t tune out! Ask
relevant questions. She’s your kid, for Pete’s sake!”
All of this came to a screeching halt when a palpable wave
of scent hit me. Hard.
It smelled like every fruit flavor Bubbalicious ever made
had been sprayed in my car via a high pressure air hose. Through my rising
nausea, I finally found a relevant question. I attempted to stop the runaway
train of words.
“Sarah, did you eat something on the bus?”
“…blah blah blah. Did I eat something? No. Why?”
“Did someone spray—?”
“Wait. Um…. I did—I mean, I ate, like, I ate my pretzels.”
At that point I could tell she was starting to worry because
the number of verbal pauses in her sentences increased exponentially. So I
tried to reassure her WHILE cross-examining her.
“It’s okay, sweetie. There’s just a very strong artificial
fruit flavor smell in the car now. I was wondering if you ate any candy or
gum…? I’m just curious.”
“No, definitely not.”
“Did someone spray hair spray near you?”
“No.”
“Body spray?”
“Noooooo….”
“Did the bus smell funny?”
“No. What do you mean? I don’t smell anything.”
Our house lies 1.3 miles from the bus stop and I spent the entire
drive scouring my brain for possible sources of the smell, only to be shot down
by firm denials and repeated questions about whether or not she actually
smelled.
As we pulled into the garage, I got the sound many parents
of pre-teen girls know all too well.
“Oh.”
“What is it, sweetie?”
“Well, my friend let me use some of her hand sanitizer at
lunch.”
“Wow. That’s powerful stuff! How about you wash your hands
while you’re in there?”
She washed hands, dumped off her lunchbox, and decided to
take her backpack with her to tae kwon do to do homework there. Meanwhile, I
rolled down windows.
The smell improved a little when she got back in, but I’d
really expected the alcohol-based scent to be GONE. Still, I made it through tae kwon do sitting next to my daughter while
she gave off waves of scent indicating someone had farted the whole Skittles
rainbow on her.
So we drive home and the puke-inducing perfume gets worse,
if possible, in the car. Just as we get into the house, S. slings her backpack
onto its usual resting place and looks at the net pocket on the outside.
“OH NO! My friend put the hand sanitizer IN my backpack!”
“Okay, okay. Did it spill? Is the lid open?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. Wait—there IS no lid!!!”
So in the middle of me trying to feed the dog, answer Little
A.’s questions, and start a quick dinner, I’m coaching S. to wipe up the car
seat, wipe up the backpack, and wipe up the floor. Then it hit me. Why????
“So why did your friend put her hand sanitizer in your
backpack?”
“Um, I don’t know. I didn’t SEE her do it!”
Okay, she’s upset. “I
was just wondering why she didn’t put it in hers.”
“Well, she didn’t have a backpack at lunch.”
“What about her lunchbox?”
“She didn’t have one today.”
“So she just walked to lunch holding an open bottle of hand
sanitizer???”
“NO!” She rolls her eyes. “She FOUND it.”
“What? Where?”
“On the bench at lunch.”
I took seventeen deep breaths.
“So I guess someone else left the bottle there because, oh,
say, it had no lid???”
“Yeah. NO. I dunno—I didn’t SEE her put it in my backpack!”
The dog got fed, we got fed, many hugs were had all around,
all ended well.
The End
