Middle is quite the creative thinker. I'll give her that.
This past Saturday, Middle was going to take her SAT test. Note that I said "going to," not "did." Middle was almost as prepared as you can possibly be to take the SAT test. She had done the practice tests. She had done the nightly vocabulary review. She had done the one-a-day emailed SAT questions. She had printed up her entry ticket, gotten her #2 pencils and calculator, and even gotten up early and made a good breakfast.
Here's where the complications came in. We have three cars and only two slots in the garage, so on Saturday morning, I was driving Middle to the test (she didn't know how to get to the location) and then taking Mr F and Mr Bunches to work with me. We maneuvered around the cars so that I had Vuey (our Saturn Vue -- all of our cars have had names, going back to "Zippy," and through "Denty," "Newey," and "Bluey." Then we got a Durango, too. That doesn't have a name. Nobody really likes the Durango except Sweetie) ready to go, and Middle pulled Bluey, the older car she uses, into the garage.
She asked me: "Should I leave my keys here?"
I said: "No, your mom's not going to need to get into Bluey."
So she left her keys there, I dropped her at the test site, and she called me at 7:40 at the office to tell me that she could not get in to take the test, which began at 8 a.m., without her ID.
Her ID that was in Bluey.
My office is at least 30 minutes from home and another 20 from the test site, so I called Sweetie, who was all set to get the ID from Bluey and to run the ID to Middle until she called me back and said:
"Bluey is locked."
Bluey was in the garage.
Which shouldn't surprise me, because I, too, lock my car in the garage, having lived in Milwaukee for a long time and having grown up with the belief (instilled in me by my Mom) that around every corner lurks a burglar/sex fiend waiting to steal your car and/or your manhood. Mom still talks about a guy that lived near her apartment in a small town, a guy she refers to vaguely and disturbingly as "Panty Hose Man." I don't know if Panty Hose Man exists but he does scare me -- scare me enough to lock my car even when it's in the garage.
The locked car put the kibosh on Middle taking the test. I didn't get too upset with her, though, since I once went to a seminar -- in Milwaukee-- on the wrong day. I drove all the way there, parked, went into the location of the seminar, and only then realized I was a day late. (I expect that will come up at my review this year.)
Middle later tried to pin the blame on me -- she said "I asked you if I should leave my keys, and you said no."
I responded: "That's because you didn't ask the right question. If you'd said I'm going to leave my ID in the car and call you later to get it from the locked car, so should I leave the keys, I'd have told you, yes, leave the keys."
She pouted and I couldn't help adding "Or, I might have told you just take the ID."
This past Saturday, Middle was going to take her SAT test. Note that I said "going to," not "did." Middle was almost as prepared as you can possibly be to take the SAT test. She had done the practice tests. She had done the nightly vocabulary review. She had done the one-a-day emailed SAT questions. She had printed up her entry ticket, gotten her #2 pencils and calculator, and even gotten up early and made a good breakfast.
Here's where the complications came in. We have three cars and only two slots in the garage, so on Saturday morning, I was driving Middle to the test (she didn't know how to get to the location) and then taking Mr F and Mr Bunches to work with me. We maneuvered around the cars so that I had Vuey (our Saturn Vue -- all of our cars have had names, going back to "Zippy," and through "Denty," "Newey," and "Bluey." Then we got a Durango, too. That doesn't have a name. Nobody really likes the Durango except Sweetie) ready to go, and Middle pulled Bluey, the older car she uses, into the garage.
She asked me: "Should I leave my keys here?"
I said: "No, your mom's not going to need to get into Bluey."
So she left her keys there, I dropped her at the test site, and she called me at 7:40 at the office to tell me that she could not get in to take the test, which began at 8 a.m., without her ID.
Her ID that was in Bluey.
My office is at least 30 minutes from home and another 20 from the test site, so I called Sweetie, who was all set to get the ID from Bluey and to run the ID to Middle until she called me back and said:
"Bluey is locked."
Bluey was in the garage.
Which shouldn't surprise me, because I, too, lock my car in the garage, having lived in Milwaukee for a long time and having grown up with the belief (instilled in me by my Mom) that around every corner lurks a burglar/sex fiend waiting to steal your car and/or your manhood. Mom still talks about a guy that lived near her apartment in a small town, a guy she refers to vaguely and disturbingly as "Panty Hose Man." I don't know if Panty Hose Man exists but he does scare me -- scare me enough to lock my car even when it's in the garage.
The locked car put the kibosh on Middle taking the test. I didn't get too upset with her, though, since I once went to a seminar -- in Milwaukee-- on the wrong day. I drove all the way there, parked, went into the location of the seminar, and only then realized I was a day late. (I expect that will come up at my review this year.)
Middle later tried to pin the blame on me -- she said "I asked you if I should leave my keys, and you said no."
I responded: "That's because you didn't ask the right question. If you'd said I'm going to leave my ID in the car and call you later to get it from the locked car, so should I leave the keys, I'd have told you, yes, leave the keys."
She pouted and I couldn't help adding "Or, I might have told you just take the ID."
Comic courtesy of xkcd.com While I didn't blame her for locking the car or forgetting her ID, here's what really bugged me about that day: On the way to the test, I said it would be an excellent practical joke if they made up a fake test with impossible questions. One impossible question, I said, could be the essay: Explain the meaning of life in 15,000 words or more. You have 10 minutes. Do not use the letter 'e.'
"Or, don't use vowels," Middle said. We laughed.
"What would you put down?" I asked. She shrugged. I said, "I'd write grrblnka."
"No," Middle said. "That has an e in it."
I don't know where Middle gets off thinking that she knows how to spell a word that I made up to explain the meaning of life without using vowels -- but she was very very certain that "grrblnka" has an e in it, and that it would require other vowels, too. And she made me start doubting myself -- after all, she was the one who'd been doing all that vocabulary work.
But in the end, I held firm and used all my moral authority to tell her that, no, she was wrong and that's all there is to it. I may not know a lot about a lot of things, but if there's one thing I do know, it's that the meaning of life = grrblnka.
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