That Time I Pulled The Car Over

Dear Hagen,

Your dad was in San Diego with the Navy last week, which always makes life a little harder for me. Being a single mom - if only temporarily - is no joke, and it's tough when I have no one to spell me when the sheer volume of words going into my ear (half of them: Mommomomomomom?? MOM!") becomes too much. After about day 4 of this, my patience is usually thinner than normal, though I typically pride myself on not losing my cool.

It's a classic parenting line: "Don't make me pull this car over." But Sunday morning, I did it.

You have a water gun. You love the water gun.

Sunday morning, Grandma Sue invited us to join her at Perkins for pancakes. Your brought your gun in the car for the ride to the restaurant. Because I'm fun and there were no pedestrians around, I rolled down your window at a stoplight and let you squirt it out the window. Then the light changed, I rolled the window up, and we kept going. No big deal. We ate pancakes. Fun, fun. But somehow, we got back in the car and everything turned to crap.

"I wanted to shoot it two times!" you wailed. "What? When?" I asked. "Out the window. On the way to pancakes!" you sobbed. "We didn't have time," I explained. "BUT! (a bunch of unintelligible shouting) FUCNWWLHDHppppffffttt!!! (big gasping inhale) TWO TIMES!!!" "It's not okay to talk to me like that," I said.

Well, that went in one tiny ear and out the other, cause the next thing out of your mouth started, "YOU'RE THE ONE WHO DIDN'T..."

...And that's when I squealed to a halt in the adjacent bank parking lot, threw the e-brake on that sumbitch, walked around the car, opened your door, snatched that gun out of your hand and yelled, "SEE THIS?!? THIS IS MINE NOW! AND I LOVE MY NEW WATER GUN!"

You lost your mind. Screamed all the way home. And I didn't care, because I was done. I had become the kind of person who gestures wildly with a purple plastic gun in a bank parking lot. Possibly not my finest moment. 

Later, I called your dad in San Diego and told him the story. "When you stopped the car, why didn't you just squirt him with the gun?" your dad asked. "I guess, because unlike you, I'm not the valedictorian of war college." So, see? Coulda been worse. 

You've since apologized, cried, napped, and gotten your water gun back. 

And your dad has come home. 

And all is right with the world. For the moment.

Love,

Mom