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I'm Hot

I'm hot. I say this without any false modesty or bravado ~~I am on fire. Literally. Ok, no actual flames are present but I'm quite certain that my core temperature is hovering between 100 and 150 degrees. Closer to the 150 mark I'm guessing.

This has nothing to do with the ambient temperature of my home ~~although I just peeked at the thermostat and it's reading a nice balmy 75 degrees in the family room with a humidity level measuring somewhere around 300%. No, this has nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with raising teenagers.

On Saturday morning we had out of town guests visiting, so naturally we had to take them out of our town in order to show them a good time. Before we left I made them a hearty breakfast consisting of a ham/onion/mushroom/cheese/egg scramble, toast, bacon and juice. As I was standing in front of the stove, getting hot (do you see a pattern here?) I was pondering the wisdom of leaving the two teenagers home and taking our two youngest daughters with us. I was leaving two teenagers alone for the day, with (and this is a biggie) car keys.

As I stood there stirring the eggs, the thought appeared in my head, and yes it actually appeared, as in I saw the letters and heard a voice telling me that there would be a car accident today. Over the years I've learned to listen to the voices (no medication required) and so I began to think about how far we were going to be from our offspring, who they could call in an emergency and then I saw something shiny, got distracted and forgot the whole episode.

Until we had just driven north of Marysville and my husband's cell phone rang. I'm driving and this is what I hear:

“Hello?”

“What?” (Sharp intake of breath)

“How bad?” (Gasp)

“Are you hurt?”

“Is Stephanie hurt? Huh? Really? How bad?”

“Ok....yeah......yeah.....uh huh....are you sure?”

“Where did this happen?”

“Is it drivable?”

“What did the police say?”

By this time I have exhausted my entire repertoire of pantomimes signaling the following statement:

TELL ME WHAT IS GOING ON OR I WILL SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUST, VEER OFF I-5 AND KILL US ALL!


As I neared the point of self-immolation, he hung up the phone and turned to look at me.

“She had an accident, didn't she? Is she ok? Was Chris in the truck? Is he ok? What happened, do we need to go home or is there someone we need to call?” I gasped out in one breath.

“I will tell you what happened if you stop looking at me and watch the road”, he calmly informed me.

Oh yeah. I was supposed to be driving.

It turns out that someone in a rather large truck rammed into our rather small truck on the passenger side at a light. No one was hurt except for our small truck. Even better is the fact that the man driving behind my daughter at the time was an off duty Washington State Patrol officer. He got out and told my daughter that it wasn't her fault, he'd seen the whole thing. She even got his name and telephone numbers.

Now you'd think with all that I'd be tickled pink and happy. You'd also think, and rightly so, that the daughter involved in the accident, through no fault of her own, would be a bit more careful in the following days. Sometimes after an accident you are a bit gun shy about driving, and you're extra careful about what you do behind the wheel of a car. You might be what is termed cautious.

That's because you're assuming that the person involved in the accident is a rational human being. No. Not even close.


This is a TEENAGE MUTANT DRIVER we're talking about here. Nothing fazes her. A bulldozer could have picked her up IN the Mazda truck and shoved her off a cliff into a roaring river and the only thing she'd be concerned about was that her hair was getting wet and you just know that's going to make it all frizzy!

Tonight she and the Boy Wonder were given the easy, uncomplicated and fairly simple task of taking home one of Boy Wonder's friends. Enough time passed that they should have been home and we were a bit concerned. I called Boy Wonder on his cell phone.

“Where are you?”

“mumble mumble um....almost home...mumble”

“Where have you been? You should have been back a long time ago”

“Oh....uh....mumble mumble....we stopped at McDonalds”

“Get home now”

I assume that they were turning the corner and parking the truck by now. After fifteen more minutes I call back.

“Where are you??”

“We just dropped Joey off and we're coming home”

“You're what??? You said you were almost home”

“We were”

Uh huh. After interrogation under bright lights and threat of key-removal, we learned that they had gone 'for a drive'.

“Gone for a drive where?”

Daughter: “Uh, I don't know the street names”

By this time I'm very unhappy and it shows. It turns out, after more key-removal threats, that they'd gone to the dirt roads to 'spin the tires'.

I now have an extra set of truck keys and two disgruntled teenagers who keep asking me 'what the big deal is' and 'what am I so hot about'.

I'm hot because nobody warned me that the tiny baby they placed in my arms seventeen years ago would grow up without any common sense.

And did I mention that today I had to go get her because apparently the truck has blown a gasket (much like me) and is no longer drivable. It's being towed tomorrow. Oh yeah baby, I'm boiling.

Even Hot Hubby was unable to fix it, though he tried.

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Comments

  1. Anonymous12:39 AM

    Pam. That's what they are supposed to do.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey, he's cute AND he knows about auto mechanics? Lucky Pammy!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I knew you are hot [did I beat Tom to that gag?], now I know why. I can still just about remember being a teenager, I couldn't drive for reasons I will eventually go into elsewhere, but definitely I can remember wondering just why everything is such a big deal for my parents.

    Mind you, I still do sometimes!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous1:28 PM

    Freetime (kinda)... Ahhhh!!

    Yikes, you have had a full weekend/week. I would like to say lesson learned but somehow...well it may take a few more tries to get it to stick.

    I imagine in time you drop down to a tepid 98°, but this story may resurface around the time their children approach 15-16. ; )

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'd slap the crap out of both of them. OK, not really, because then they could call 911 on you. But I'd be pretty dang mad. Hope you come out on the other end with an intact car.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Vicus, you are wrong. That is not what they are supposed to do. They are supposed to be good little boys and girls and not give me heart failure and high blood pressure.

    Carmenzta, yes, I am one lucky lady and I know it. He's quite handy around the house too!

    Krusty, my dear friend. Tom appears to have abandoned me and doesn't visit any more. I knew he was fickle but oh the pain...

    Jenny, you're right. I have two more teenagers-in-waiting. Oh the joy.

    TMM, I thought briefly about the smacking but refrained. Both of them are taller than I am now.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous7:42 AM

    I waited late to have my kids (now ages 5 & 8). This is what I have to look forward to!!

    Eek!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Never mind 911, my Mummy stopped hitting me when I was thirteen; she burst a bloodvessel in her hand. Violence lost its appeal when it hurt her more than me, and I could stand there and giggle. She's also intelligent enough to know that if she deployed a weapon, any vestige of moral authority was gone forever.

    Mind you, living in Hamlet-in-Nowhere, unable to drive, living opposite the local bus-driver thus fully aware of his alcoholism, and so utterly dependent on parental goodwill to do anything more exciting than drop waterbombs on coaltrains, it makes for an interesting negotiating position. A wily old bird, my Ma.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Carolyn, I know what you mean about having your kids later. I had my last ones a bit late.

    Krusty, your mum sounds a bit like mine, although we didn't live near a drunken bus driver.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Yeah, yikes.

    So I've been hauling her around since the truck died, right? I let her take the suburban somewhere and now she thinks it's hers.

    Oooooh no baby girl. Ain't no way.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Pamela
    The hairy/scarey days of teenage drivers are behind me - blessedly. But, even when they are grown and out of the house, their driving skills concern me! I feel for you darlin'...
    Hang in there - maybe an icepack will ease the boiling point you've reached - til next time... OH! and the spin the tires drill... once my middle daughter came in WAAAAAAAAAAAY too late...when I finally dragged it out of her, she announced that she and three boys from school had been "to Bad Luck"... Now I ask you, what is the attraction of a place called "Bad Luck"? Well, seems that you can drive wrecklessly and PRETEND that your vehicle is made for off road romps even if it isn't really! SHE learned that Bad Luck for her meant GROUNDED! [grin]
    Lee

    ReplyDelete

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