I took the girls on a bike ride yesterday.
Along the way, we spot an empty playground. Up here in Oregon? There are playgrounds filled with hard, sharp, metal playground equipment like I remember from my own childhood. At this particular playground? There is not a primary plastic color to be found.
There is a set of swings, a bank of 5 see-saws, and a tall metal slide. All circa 1974.
Maj sees danger everywhere. Kallan runs off to play.
After just a few minutes, I call Maj over.
“Oh my god, Maj . . . stop yelling at your sister! I have things under control. I do not need you to help me.”
“OK, but you do need help. You are not saying the things that I am saying, so someone has to step in and say those things. If you are not going to do your job, someone has to do it.”
“Really, Maj?”
“Yes. You’re welcome.”
“Babe, come sit with me for a minute,” and I pat the ground next to me.
Maj walks over and sits, “OK, but do you see her? She is walking down the slide! She is not holding on! She is just standing straight and tall and walking down the slide! It is a huge tall dangerous slide and she is walking down it and you are saying nothing. That is so dangerous. She could be killed! But do you care? No, you just want to talk to me about yelling too much.”
She turns and glares at me, “Yeah, because clearly this is the bigger emergency. And when Kallan is dead? And someone wants to know how that happened? You can explain all about how you had to lecture me about how I should not be safe.”
“Jesus, Maj. Take a breath. There is no one else at this park. It’s just the three of us. No one cares if Kallan is walking on the slide. Let it go.”
“This is not just about rules, Mother. Although it is COMPLETELY against the rules to walk on a slide. HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THIS?”
I hold up my cell phone, “Listen, if Kallan falls and breaks all of her arms and legs, I will call 911 and they will come and get her. And then maybe I will get a small lecture from a doctor about letting Kallan walk down a slide. But guess what?”
“What?”
“After Kallan’s casts come off and we head out one fine future day to play at the park? I am so going to let her walk down a slide again if she wants to walk down a slide.”
“So basically, you are saying that you want Kallan dead.”
Sigh.
“Yes, Maj. That is correct. Soon after Kallan was born, I realized what a tragic mistake I had made. So my evil plan? Is to let Kallan play all wildly dangerously at the playground until she is dead. And then it will be just the two of us again, babe.”
I swing my arm around Maj and give her a big squeeze, “Just the two of us. Like it was always meant to be.”
“You are not even funny, Mother.”
“I should probably ask her to take off her bicycle helmet.”
“So not funny.”
Kallan runs up, “Maj! Come do the see-saws with me!”
That goes about as well as you might expect.
And then Kallan is standing in the middle of the see-saw, trying to gauge how far she can walk in one direction before the balance shifts.
And here is Maj, “I could have been killed!”
“I get it, Maj. She should not have leaped from the see-saw while you were still in the air. However, the lucky thing? Is that you have legs.”
“What?”
“You have legs. Legs you used to stop the death. And then you were just standing and crabby. Not dead at all.”
“You never care when she tries to kill me.”
Sigh.
Time to head out. Kallan is in the lead, Maj second, and I bring up the rear. This last stretch of our bike ride is the only portion of our ride that is not a bike path, a ½ mile stretch down a quiet tree-lined street. To the parking lot where we left the car.
Here is Maj . . .
WATCH OUT FOR CARS PULLING OUT!
STAY TO THE RIGHT!
YIELD!
YIELD!
IF YOU DON’T SPEED UP, I AM GOING TO PASS YOU!
DON’T GO SO FAR AHEAD! YOU WILL LOSE US!
STAY TO THE RIGHT!
ACK! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? YOU CAN’T JUST STOP LIKE THAT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
I pull up behind the two girls, and they are both yelling at me . . .
From Maj, “MOTHER, I COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED! DID YOU SEE WHAT SHE DID? I COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED!”
From Kallan, “Mom, tell her to stop yelling at me! I know how to ride a bicycle. She is all crazy and yelling at me for nothing at all.”
Jesus.
“OK, Kallan. If you need to stop, you need to get off to the side of the road, right? Your sister should not need to swerve to avoid you.”
“Right, sorry.”
“And Maj? You do not get to yell anymore. At all. If you yell again? I am going to knock on one of these doors and give someone a free bike. And then you will be walking. Do you understand me?”
“Geez, you don’t have to be so crabby.”
“Do you understand me?”
“Yes, OK. No more safety. Got it.”
We pedal the short remaining distance to the car. Pile our bikes into the back of the minivan. Climb into the car. Crank the air conditioner.
Maj checks her seatbelt to be sure it is snug, “That was fun! We should go bike riding every day.”
There is silence in the car.
Maj reaches forward for the bottle of hand sanitizer, “What?”
Sigh.
*wiping the tears from my eyes and the coffee from my monitor*
Your blog posts should come with a warning!
Snort! I am so happy to have made you spit and laugh this morning!
Yay, me!
And no warnings . . . I love to catch people off guard.
Man, you’re hot when you use your mommy voice.
And you know what, when we were kids? We didn’t have bike helmets. Or wear seat belts. Or not drink antifreeze. And yet somehow, we managed to survive with only minimal brain damage and loss of vision.
Maj needs to take a chill pill.
I know . . . no helmets, no seatbelts (and sometimes no seats), sharp edges and dangerous behavior all over the place, and we survived.
If only there was a chill pill. I would so shove it down Maj’s protesting throat.
And my mommy voice? I am so sexy when I use that voice. It is hard to get anything done around here, because Mark keeps getting all distracted by the hotness.
Not now, babe! I am in the middle of disciplining our daughters!
I learned to ride a bike on the streets of NYC. Also, to roller skate. On the kind of skates that you screwed to your shoes with a key. I’m old like that.
Helmet? Protective gear? What’s that?
We used to play endless days of Evil Knievel.
In which we built huge ramps and jumps from which to fling our un-helmeted bicycling selves.
The best part? When we managed to talk neighborhood kids into lying beneath our jumps. That was awesome.
Maj would die if I told her that stuff.
How is it, exactly, that you still have hair?
Or wait…*gasp*…are you secretly bald??
I am not bald.
But Maj does try my patience. If patience were hair? I would have only a few strands remaining.
“Soon after Kallan was born, I realized what a tragic mistake I had made.” Priceless.
I’m so glad you aren’t my mother – only because if you were? I would so not find you funny. Poor Maj. Snort.
By the time I make a comment like that to Maj?
You better believe that I am in need of some comic relief.
It is not always necessary that Maj find me amusing. I crack myself up. That is enough.
And then I have the patience to not run screaming from my older daughter.
Good lord you guys crack me up!
I imagine your talks with the girls to sound something like the talks I have recently witnessed between my aunt Sara and her two kids (son and daughter)… So now when I read your posts, the words sound as if they are coming directly from Sara. Mom’s are great!
I do that all the time when I read stuff!
Hear it in the voices of people I know who might be in this situation and saying these words.
Love that.
Holy hell I love you and I love reading your posts. “That was fun! We should go bike riding every day.” Priceless.
And those old metal playgrounds. Now those were real playgrounds. Back in the day, I was dangling from my legs upside down from the metal monkey bars (which were far to high in the air to be safe — once you were on them, you either made it across or busted a leg), trying to impress some neighbor boys. It was 90 degrees out, my legs, a tad sweaty. Needless to say they slipped off the metal bar and I fell to the ground. Landing on my head. Nice. I was undamaged, thank god, but the boys? Laughed and were not all impressed with my skills.
I fell from those same crazy-high bars. And remember the geodesic domes of metal? They have those up here in Oregon as well!
I LOVED the playground dome when I was a kid.
Ooooh . . .I just thought of a story I will have to post here sometime.
Holy cats I loved the metal domes!!! Ha! Such a disaster waiting to happen, but great fun.
Can’t wait for the metal dome inspired story to come!
My first thought when you described the playground? “Sweet! A real playground! Score!” Perhaps I’m not overprotective enough. Hmm.
Perhaps Maj is preparing for her role as overprotective mother. Maybe someone should advise her to start saving now for those bubbles that are for keeping kids in. I think they’re expensive. That way, when her kids start developing that twitch from her safety-conscious lectures, they won’t fall over & hurt themselves or anything.
I have told Mark that we need a giant plastic hamster ball for Maj.
It makes me giggle just to think of her all raging and crabby in a rolling hamster ball.
Snort!
About a month ago my father and I took my baby, Dexter, to the playground. And I put Dexter in a swing. One of those swings made just for babies. I gave the swing a push and my dad grabbed the it. He said the Dexter was going to fall out. He proceeded to swing the baby back and forth while holding him. Also he told me that monkey bars at to dangerous and he took them out of his playground (he works at a school).
We went home and I told my mother. She just laughed. I guess he told her she was reckless for putting him in a swing the week before.
Maybe Maj should play at my father’s playground. He has recycled tire on the ground in case someone falls and nothing fun to do but it is really safe.
I try hard not to be overprotective and to let the girls explore and do what they want to do. That’s what childhood is for, right?
But one of my kids? Is a back-up overprotective mom when I am lax.
Luckily, Kallan mostly ignores her. Kallan is far more patient with her sister than I would have been if one of my brothers or sisters had behaved as Maj does when I was a kid. I would have been doing wheelies and screeching to a burning rubber halt right in front of Maj.
All day long. Because as I recall? That shit never got old.
I do believe that darling Maj should play at Dorie’s dads house for now and wait for the day she has twin Kallan’s of her own!Reading this post really makes me miss the girls and our playdates.
I miss you as well.
Although I don’t remember that we paid a lot of attention to the girls and their playdates.
There was too much giggling and drinking.
I do miss you.
Wow. You have so much more patience than I do. My oldest son nags the hell out of his younger brother just like that. I am usually too annoyed by it to come up with anything more clever than “will you just SHUT UP already??” Jeez. The situation seems so hilarious the way you write about it!
I have my, “Oh my god! Shut up!” moments.
Those are not as fun to write about, but I have them.
All I could think of reading this (between the laughs that is) is “DANGER, DANGER, Will Robinson”
Mark quotes that line sometimes! And then we both giggle behind our hands.
When I was in kindergarten I tried to jump on the merry go round…some grabbed my hand and someone else kept pushing faster and I was dragged along the ground until my head bled freely…when I was in second grade I tripped on the hippy pants my mother made me wear on the way to recess and hit my head on a brick wall and still went on. When I was in sixth grade we were playing on the ice and got hit with a malachi crunch (happy days for you way too young people) and got knocked out. I never went to the hospital and I still turned out okay. Well, I think I’m okay…other’s people opinions don’t matter, right?
I got hurt countless times as a kid doing countless dangerous things. I never went to the doctor.
I can count on one hand (and have fingers left over) the times I went to the doctor when I was a kid.
It would take more than two hands (way more) to catalog the various injuries I suffered during play.
My family was big on the, “Shake it off” philosophy.
Oh my god I love your comebacks to Maj. I should start a notebook full of my favorites so I can use them when I have kids. HAH-larious!
How excellent would that be?
You with your smart-ass kid, all flipping through a notebook to find what Kris said one time. Wait just a second, I know it’s here somewhere.
I am all snorty laughter at the thought!
lmao…thanks i needed a good laugh and this was definitely the place to go to get that laugh
Thank you!