May 12, 2011
by
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Dear Annie,
Someday, maybe a day long from now when your life has settled into predictable rhythms (assuming that there will be a rhythm, eventually) of dry cleaning pick up and trash day remembering and book club meetings and work.
Please, PLEASE remember today.
Remember today how you were freshly home from taking the boys to school.
Remember the plans for a shower and a trip to Trader Joe’s.
Remember how those plans were dashed in a moment by a call from the school nurse because your youngest son had lice.
Again. For the third time.
Remember how you went to get him at school and it was only nine o’clock in the morning.
Remember how you thoughtlessly unlocked the car door through the open window — setting off the car alarm.
Remember how the key fob (the one you use to turn off the alarm) had chosen this exact moment in time to give up the ghost.
Remember how this left you driving home with the horn blasting and the
lights blinking.
Remember how the old dear weeding the begonias in her yard watched you go down the street until you turned the corner.
Remember how, when you were finally home, you sat in the bathroom, lice treatment on your own hair (just in case) and a warm compress on the stye forming in your left eye wondering if your life could get any more glamorous.
Remember driving to the auto parts store with horn and lights blaring, again.
Remember waving to the yardman thinking folks who steal cars don’t wave. Right?
Remember rejoicing when the honking was done as you pulled into the parking lot.
Remember parking by some folks who were having a truly terrible day.
Remember how you could see the sorrow in their eyes, the desperation, really, and thinking to yourself how you didn’t want to add to it with a honking blinking vehicle that they would not be able to escape from.
Remember that you decided in this moment to spare them by not opening the door (which would trigger the alarm, again) but by exiting the vehicle Bo Duke style. Only doing it with a long swingy skirt and flip flops instead of his well fitting Levis.
Remember that these folks didn’t even notice a grown woman in a floppy skirt slithering out of her car window right next to them, such was their despair.
Remember, most of all, as you drove away with a non-beeping, non-blinking car, laughing so hard at your crazy morning, how grateful you were to your parents who not only gave you the Gilliland brow and the Smith freckles, but made sure that a keen sense of the ridiculous was yours as well.
It’s worth remembering.
