Smooth Mother-In-Law

My son, Drake, never intended to be in show choir. However, his father and I are monsters and force him to choose some musical venue in which to participate every year. He signed up for choir. His teacher heard him sing, gave him an secret and impromptu audition, and, ta-da, he was in.

My Mother-in-law, a retired music teacher, is quite pleased with the musical activity of her grandchildren and tries to attend all of their concerts. Fortunately, since she has fourteen grandchildren, when she retired the school district gave her a card that lets her into activities at half the admission price. Drake's concert was downtown, and I knew it would be packed out. I bought a ticket for Mike and I, but I left her to get her own ticket since she has her magical card. I told her I would save her a seat, and then I went to make myself unpopular by placing jackets on the seats I needed to save.

She found me about five minutes before the show began, fought the crowd to reach her seat, and sat beside me.
"My card doesn't work here for some reason," she said as she sat down.
"You had to pay full price?" I asked.
"I showed the guy my card, but he said it didn't mean anything to him. I said it should. But, I didn't want to make a scene, so I just told him I would pay full price. Then I felt stupid when he said it was only a dollar," she said, laughing at herself.
"What? The admission price was six dollars," I told her.
"He said a dollar," she looked confused.
"Did you get your ticket from the ticket window downstairs?"
"No. I just went to the booth by the door."
"The booth where the man is selling bottled water?"
"He had water."
"You haggled with the water guy."
"No!" she shook her head even as the truth was dawning on her.
"So, let me get this straight. You walked up to the water booth, told the guy you should get your water for half price, then paid full price, walked away WITHOUT a bottle of water, and walked into the concert WITHOUT buying a ticket?"
"I think so," she whispered.

I have so much to learn from her.

Rum Pum Pum Pum

Lately Josiah has been carrying a practice pad around with him and drumming at all moments of the day. He has a piece from school that he wants to get just perfect, so as I made supper he serenaded me, and I couldn't resist filming it. About twenty minutes after I filmed this, several of his friends showed up for a sleepover, and, let me tell you, when your son is a drummer and invites his drumming friends over, the entire family gets the rhythm. As I write this, my floor is thudding and thumping. Just to walk to the kitchen makes me feel like dancing Masaai style.

Our drums are in the basement, but they might as well be in my ear cavity. Which is only a problem if you have any hope of conversing, hearing a movie, or concentrating. But we ignore all of these activities and let the boys drum their little hearts out. Besides, that gives us time to prepare the food they require as they emerge, sweaty and hungry, from the basement every hour.

I believe that music is a healthy and valuable place to belong, so I put up with a lot of cacophony in order to ensure that music remains a part of my children's lives. But, honestly, there are fifteen seconds of the drumming experience I absolutely live for.

My son, and his friends, drum to the music on their iPods. So, they put songs on there that they want to learn, favorite songs, or songs they are practicing for church. Then they stick the earphones in and drum away. That leaves us to only hear the drumming and not the actual song. As they drum along, they cannot really hear themselves at all, but we can. Every once in awhile there is a space in the song where the drums are quiet for about fifteen seconds. During those fifteen seconds all we hear is their loud, shouting voices as they sing along to music we cannot hear. I stop everything and listen. It is the most wonderful thing I have ever heard.

It makes me wonder. What if we did life like my son does those fifteen seconds? Loud and bold. With everything you've got. Like you are the best that you can be.

It might be great.

Just like teenage boys, lost in music, with all the potential of their unwritten futures still inside of them.

Can anything be better than fifteen-year-old boys singing like no one is listening?

Speaker Phone

I've never thought of myself as someone who has an abnormally fat face. But my phone does. Apparently, during my phone conversations, my cheek becomes animated and does surprising things. It will often touch the button on the screen that mutes me. This is irritating. My cheek also dials numbers causing a loud beep to frighten both me and my listener. Again - irritating. My cheek has also been known to randomly dial someone from my contact list changing my two-way conversation to a surprising three-way phone call.

The most common thing my cheek does is to suddenly touch the button on the screen that changes my conversation to speaker phone. In the grocery store, in the waiting room at the doctor's office, in a car full of people, my private conversation is suddenly loud and public.

This happened recently as I was talking to my husband while driving a car full of teenagers to church. I had forced him to watch a television show with me that was certainly intended for a female audience. Halfway through the show, he admitted he was mildly interested in the characters, and by the end of the show he admitted that he had actually enjoyed it. I was telling him that I was thankful that he had watched a show I had picked out instead of Transformers or some other manly show that I can barely stand. He told me the show had surprised him and, in fact, he would watch the next one with me because he had actually enjoyed it that much.

That is when my cheek took action and he was unknowingly and suddenly on speaker phone. Which is unfortunate because his next sentence was, "I GUESS I AM MUCH MORE FEMININE THAN I KNEW." It was loud. It was shocking. It was said to an audience of our teenage children and their teenage friends who had spent the night.

I nearly crashed trying to hang up.

Then I nearly crashed from laughing.

I'm not nice.

Spring Rodents

There's just something about spring-time that makes a dog want to bestow upon his people a dead rodent.

My dog, usually so cute and loving, has begun to think of dead rodents as flowers. He offers them to me as if they were a vase of red roses.

When he is super proud of himself he prances around as if he were a show horse. When I saw him prancing back and forth across the garage floor, I smiled and thought upon the adorableness of my dog. But upon closer inspection, I was bothered. Something identical to a limp tail was dangling from his mouth. Filled with disgust I shouted at him to, "GROSS DROP IT GROSS GROSS GROSS!!!" He complied immediately and respectfully and proudly placed a very sad baby squirrel at my feet.

After shouting at the sky, wringing my hands in despair, and walking in aimless circles looking for help, I decided to use the push broom while holding the tip top of the handle to gently push the poor, dear, creature out of the garage and into the grass. Which I did. With my eyes closed. Tight.

I immediately went into the house and took a scalding shower which did not remove the gross from my memory. But, feeling assured that I was free of dead rodent germs, I resumed normal life. But then normal life dropped me like a hot potato.

Later in the afternoon, I opened the screen door that leads from the garage to the house and almost fell over. Strewn across the floor was a carpet of dead rodents. Okay, maybe not a carpet, but there were several. All dead.

In shock, I stood with my mouth agape while my dog approached in his proudest prance, kneeled, and placed his head on my feet.  If my garage floor had, in fact, been strewn with red roses, it would have been one of the sweetest highlights of my life.

However, it just wasn't.

Texting At School

As I sat in the carpool lane at school waiting for Drake to exit the building, I received a phone call. I didn't recognize the number, so I was immediately skeptical.

"Hello?"
"Mom? It's me - Drake."
"I'm in the parking lot. Where are you?"
"In the principal's office. And I need you to come into the office, please."
"Is something wrong?" I asked as sweat began to form on my forehead.
"I just need you to come and get my phone. I got it taken away today because I was texting, and when that happens they need a parent to get the phone back."

I marched into the school like thunder and gave my son the evil eye as I signed the form stating that my son had broken a rule and we were ever so sorry. Hoping to make a good impression on the principal and office staff, I began to fix Drake right then and there.

"Son, you should never text during school," I told him in my how dare you voice.
"I know. I'm sorry."
"You know better," I told him in my shame on you voice.
"I know, Mom. I'm really sorry."
"Having your phone is a privilege, and I expect you to treat it in such a manner."
"I will. I promise," Drake hung his head.
"Who were you texting anyway?" I asked, thinking to eliminate that person from the list of acceptable friends.
"You."
"What?"
"You texted me and asked if I had show choir, so I was responding so you would know that it was not today."

Doh.