This Actually Happened AKA How to Scare Kids at a Bus Stop
Yes, this incident actually happened and I'm pretty sure it wasn't a coincidence. Let's file it under the heading - How to Scar Your Tween for Life 101 - Is that a class? I should probably teach it.
Recently, I wrote a humor piece listing the inventive ways one could screw up their kids and I also did a piece for SmartBeautyGuide on adult breakouts - and in some weird twist of events I had an incident that was a mash-up of the two, in the most amusing way possible. Well, amusing for me, not my tween.
I was driving J to the bus stop, which is within our neighborhood and about 200 yards from my house.
Me: Dude (I call him dude in an attempt to seem all casual with him, and I'm pretty sure it also makes me seem awesomely cool - if it were the 90s)… Dude, you should really walk to the bus stop in the morning.. it's literally like a block away.
J: No way, it's too far.
Me: Yeah, for someone without legs.
J: (In erratic tween fashion where you don't know if they'll laugh at your sarcasm or not) Really, now you have a problem with people that don't have legs?
Me: Yeah, maybe I do.
(I don't. I want to make sure to put that out there just in case a person with no legs and at the same time no understanding of sarcasm happens to be reading this post.)
So, I drop him off and spin around a cul de sac to head back home, but my bestie (who also drives her lazy son with legs to school), is stopped and blocking the road a bit.
Being that neither of us is allowed to address our sons at the stop, we like to make road ragey faces at each other as we pass in the mornings and pretend the other has committed an annoying driving offense (for our own amusement).
I pull in front of her in the gap between her and the stop sign and sit there just to bug her. 20 tweens stare blankly at their phones 5 feet from my passenger side. Then Susan honks at me which is like beeping right in their faces.
Everyone looks up.
I bang my wheel in a display of shock, the kids nervously look at each other, trying to access what's happening.
Susan honks again … and lays on the horn.
The kids are pretty sure something big is happening. Something beyond a one honk little joke.
She threw down the gauntlet, but I'm braless, shoeless and my hair is matted to my head from the awesome night sweat I had last night… oh, and I have a big black spot on my face where I put Origins clay mask to proactively avoid getting a zit… most importantly it could be really damaging to my kid. It is clear that this is not the time to amuse myself and embarrass my tween. I give Susan an angry fist in the rearview mirror and pull away.
Yeah right!
I hastily open my door walk out of my car (matted hair, zit creamed, saggy boobed and all) slam the door behind me and walk towards her vehicle yelling: "That's how it's gonna be?" "Oh, it's on!"
Susan locks her doors as I start pounding on her windows, "Get out of the car!" I'm throwing fake gang signs, she's making her "It's On" face, I'm yelling "BRING IT!"
Some kids are laughing, others mouths agape and her son looks down in an attempt to find his happy place (this will cost her).
I can't see my son, who I may or may not be scarring (you really never can tell). I walk back to my car, mumbling about how she's lucky she didn't open the door, but she's dead meat and we both drive off. We stop before our street and fall out of our cars laughing.
I'm all ready to text J: "Are you sure you wouldn't rather walk to school?" when I get a text with a bunch of emoji faces that are laughing so hard they're crying. Susan's text was more like "promise you will Never Ever Ever Do THAT AGAIN!!!"
See, you never know which way it's gonna go.
Now, I'm stuck driving to the bus stop and Susan's off the hook.
It was still worth it.
Related Pieces:
When Your Tween Son Pays Attention to You - Play it Cool Real Cool
Tween Still Need Their Moms -- Here's Proof
I'll have so many more chances to mess with him (or be ignored by him) this summer -- as my kids are going to sleepaway camp and I'm following them -- in a humor series called The Mom Goes to Camp Experiment it'll be a Mom's look at camp from the inside. You can follow along on my blog, TheSuburbanJungle or on my Facebook Page. It should be um, interesting or it will cause me to go insane or maybe both.
