He was alone for three minutes. Dave was on the throne & I was deep in conversation with the older two. Three minutes was all it took. I heard running back and forth across the tile in our bathroom. The door to the bathroom creaked open. “MOOOMMMM!!!! GET UP HERE!!!,” I heard Dave bellow. “Crap.,” I thought. I don’t hear blood curdling screams, so we’re not talking ER trip. I prepped myself for a room on fire. I raced up the stairs in time to see TJ waving around my favorite permanent lipstick wand. He threw it down and streaked past me before I could catch him. I rounded the corner into the bathroom and the dread mounted. He had painted everything in sight with a gorgeous hue of mauve. A slow whine escaped my lips along with some silent and defeated curse words. I sank to my knees. “Sorry, Honey…,” Dave began. “Not your fault. It was only three minutes…,” I trailed off. “You just get him out of here and brush everyone’s teeth and I’ll clean up.” So I slowly cleaned everything up with makeup remover, that magic elixir of do-overs. Maybe if I drank some it would help me re-do this day…
When I finished, I walked out onto the short staircase and scanned the landing below. The Hurricane also had time to gather as many tampons as he could and unwrap them. It looked like a White Christmas had come early. I closed my eyes & walked back to our bedroom to describe to Dave the next scene. Without cracking a smile he said, “If he had done a panty raid, he would have had the perfect trifecta.”
This is why we can’t have…things. Taylor Goodman
An American humorist, writer and author. When boiling down the chicken soup of life, she finds those golden, fried nuggets of truth & writes them long after the kids go to bed.
