I hated that bag, anyway.

My husband and I are constantly choreographing the daily dance of picking up and delivering various children to and from various places. One recent day he drove our girl and our puppy to karate, while I simultaneously picked up our boy and brought him to karate, where the kids would alternate taking their respective classes and playing with said puppy and daddy while I dashed down the street to the gym.


I was running late, the class started in like 5 minutes as I peeled away from the dojo. I was stopped at an eternal red light, and thought I’d save a few minutes by pulling on my shorts and changing shoes. I was stopped right next to a police car, but it’s not illegal to change your pants while driving, right? As long as it’s hands free. I would not have tried this if I hadn’t been wearing a skirt, but it was easy enough to ditch my shoes, slip off my undies, and yank the shorts on and the skirt off in the time it took for that light to turn red. At the next light, I got my socks on and shoved my feet into my sneakers. By the time I pulled in to the gym parking lot, I was almost transformed, but the class had already started and I did not want to waste time running downstairs to the locker room to change my upper half. I had a tank top on that I could work out in, I just needed to change from my regular bra to an athletic one. So I parked, and while it was easy to get my bra off, it turned out to be very challenging to get the sports bra on while keeping my gigantic breasts covered by the tank top I was still wearing. I thought I had it once, but my head was in the wrong hole or something and it was not okay. I scowled and looked around, then grabbed a beach towel from the rapidly growing pile of cast off clothing on the floor of my passenger seat. I reclined my seat, covered myself with the towel, and took my shirt off. I got all put back together and bolted in for the class. Yay, me!

A few days later, my boy gave his final presentation at school. It was a demonstration of velocity to complement his research on rollercoasters. It was constructed on a big pegboard, and his experiment was to find out how steep the drop had to be to generate enough speed for a marble to make it around his loop. Here, see for yourself:






On the morning of the presentation, I drove him and his project to school, we were running late (chronically prompt people please just shoosh). We had the huge project, I had my gym bag, my purse, and 2 go-cups of coffee (sorry, Al Gore). We parked in the school lot, and I put my cell phone in my pocket and carried the project for my boy. I hung around in the school for about 10 minutes, trying to figure out if I should go to work for a while and then come back, or if I should just stay and sit through a bunch of lesser other kids’ presentations before my superstar took the stage. I decided on the latter, and went out to the car to get my coffee. I also grabbed my purse from the front passenger seat, because my camera was in it.

My husband and girl joined me to watch our boy rock his presentation, and because the teachers knew I was waiting to get to work, they bumped our boy up in the batting order so he was the 5th or so kid to present. He was so awesome – I could see him remembering all the tips we had offered for public speaking, like don’t hold your cards in front of your face (he held them down by his waist, good eyesight); make eye contact with the audience (every few lines he would stop and stare directly at me); speak slowly and clearly into the mike (check, check. is this thing on?). His experiment worked perfectly and he was a hit. I walked out of there beaming, my heart singing like a chorus of angels.



Then this:

Smashed.

Back into school, phone calls to work, police, husband, insurance, glass company. At some point, the custodian and another parent offered to go out and sweep up the glass, I gratefully handed over my keys. When I was done with my calls, I went out to help. I am really sorry that I did not have the presence of mind to photograph that next moment, I was simply too stunned by the vision.

Remember that rapidly growing pile of cast off clothing on the floor of my passenger seat? It was being removed piece by piece and shaken out by these two men, and then piled on the trunk of the Mercedes that was parked next to me.

Let’s review: beach towel, bra, skirt, shoes, underwear.

There was other various kid shit down there as well, but come on! What do you say in that moment? I grabbed my pile of shame and shoved it in to the back seat, thanked my helpful friends without looking directly into their eyes, and drove off with my tailpipe between my legs.

The asshole bastard smashed my window to steal my gym bag. He did not realize that I am the last person in America without an ipod. The bag contained one pair of stinky sneakers that were due for replacement, one good but old workout getup, a towel, a brush, my book, and a pocket full of shampoo from the bottle that had opened up in there the night before. When I packed the bag that morning, I had decided not to bother cleaning out the shampoo because I hated that bag, and I wanted to throw it away right then and there but I was running so late that I would have to use it this one last time.

I'm pissed that all my stuff probably ended up in a dumpster, including the book was very much enjoying, The Gathering. I had to borrow something to read while the window was being replaced and it turned out to be a really great book that I probably would not have picked up otherwise: Before Women had Wings, by Connie Mae Fowler. I guess the cosmic waitress got my order right after all.