Twisted Family Antics

Last night four of us slept on the floor of a museum surrounded by hundreds of other little girls and their mothers (or their wacky Girl Scout leaders).  When I signed up for the trip it sounded like a dreamy idea, a childhood memory that could not be missed. 

Like everything else, it’s one of those things that seems like a fantastic plan for the future. 

Yesterday that imaginary fun-filled trip became my sudden & immediate reality. 

That would be the day I had to actually pack a garbage bag with all our personal items, fill a box with food, label each & every item, drive two hours through traffic & rain squalls, carry all our worldly belongings up and down 423 stairs more than once, and eventually sleep on a cement slab in the Electricity Room. 

If you should ever come up with a crazy idea like this one, I want to be your guardian angel.  I want to prepare you for reality and let it really sink into your brain before you make your decision:

You will leave your home at 4 p.m.  You will stand in lines, conduct experiments, watch IMAX theater and study exhibits.  You will observe giggling girls and harried looking women.

After eight exhausting hours it will be time to rest.  And if you are at this mean old museum that does not provide cots, you will lay out your thin sleeping bag and rest your weary bones on a floor that has been walked on by thousands and thousands of people every day, an extraordinarily hard, hard floor.  And it will become cold.

Your entire body will ache as you turn one direction and then another.  If you have a bad knee it will throb from exertion.  You will pray for sleep because you don’t seem to actually be able to get there, what with your pockets filled with a cell phone, camera, dental floss, walnuts & a flashlight; one arm wrapped around the purse holding 27 credit cards and the other on your daughter.

That would be the daughter who does not sleep at all, who plays with a flashlight and reads a book that she would never dream of reading in her room at home, the daughter who becomes more hyper with each passing moment. 

You will have the fantasy experience of brushing your teeth in a public washroom as your hair stands on end (as it always does at 6:30 a.m.).  Only considering the fact that the clock jumped forward an hour during your sleep (or lack thereof), you are really brushing your teeth at 5:30 a.m. surrounded by strangers. 

When you attempt to use a commode there will be a line 50 deep.  You will probably decide, as I did, that you can just hold it a while longer.  I mean do you really need to pee first thing in the morning?

And when you begin to feel as if you may survive, as though you can actually see clearly and are thinking, “This isn’t so bad, it’s almost over!”, you will discover that the little girl who has traveled with you, who will be returning home in your car, has diarreah and is now vomiting at regular intervals.

The museum industry is not as prepared for nausea-related incidents as the airline industry, so you will see your friend, the sick child’s mother, walking toward you with an industrial size black garbage bag intended for accidental discharge. 

She will be forced to use said bag in the planetarium.  The little girl will insist on riding the museum train before leaving, at which point she will exhaust herself and insist that she can no longer walk.

You will bite the bullet and decide to get into the car and wing your way home as quickly as possible.  Your windows will remain open in the 45 degree weather.  You will make a wrong turn in your panic, as you hear her heaving behind your headrest, a sound you never dreamed possible.

Your daughter will decide that this is a good time to open the plastic surrounding her breakfast muffin.  She will actually say, “I forgot how great apple juice tastes!”

And you wonder, “Can this child possibly be my progeny?”  You will begin to scream silently.

The sick child will fall asleep in the car and you will make it home safely.  You will survive another silly decision you’ve made as a mother, believing that your offspring must do everything under the sun or her childhood will be ruined.

You will be oh so happy to be home!

Soon the memories will dim and you will think of the good times you had, sleeping at the museum.  You will begin planning a trip for the future . . .

(Read here for Roxanne at Owl Moon Studio’s explanation of how we all seem to think nothing of screwing our future selves: http://owlmoon.blogspot.com/2008/01/ive-been-tagged-ive-been-tagged-ive.html  It is absolutely hysterical and so totally true.)