In-A-Gadda-Da-Google

My package arrived at my apartment last night.

I’m pretty sure that someone delivered it between 9:15 and 10:00. That’s the time that I took a shower and checked the latest news on the web. I went through some emails, too. Several of my contacts had notified about their packages having arrived, so I had to delete them from my address book.

All that took about 45 minutes. I’d checked my security cams before that, and the only thing out in the hallway was my parents’ welcome mat. It was my good luck charm. Their porch had pretty much been the only part of their house left standing, so seeing it outside my door always calmed me a little, not much, but I think maybe it’s keeping me sane.

So at about 9:15 or so, the hall was empty. I wrote the time down in my security log, so I know that’s right. Then, at 10:00, right after I’d checked my email, I checked my cameras again, and there it sat. A rectangular package put square in the center of that old mat.

It looked just like the ones I’d seen on the news feeds. Not much bigger than a tissue box. No labels, addresses, or postmarks of any kind – no surprise there, the government had shut down the post office and all delivery services months ago. No visible tape, twine, or wires but still somehow wrapped neatly in newspaper. I zoomed in on the package with the security camera to identify the newspaper. It looked crisp and current, but I already knew what it would be. The Hatton Courier. March 12, 1975. My hometown paper. Issued on my birthday. My spine itched all the way up to the base of my neck.

I knew the box was my package. I’d finally gotten mine. I’d known that eventually I would, but I still felt my heart pound up into my neck. I felt nauseous staring at it through the vidcams installed on the outside of my door. I flicked the monitor off and closed my eyes. Even with them shut, afterimages of the box floated across my vision. Vertigo gripped me, making me latch onto the arms of my desk chair so that I’d feel anchored to something and not be sucked away.

Breathe! A tiny part of my brain reminded me. The rational part. I was surprised it had survived. You’re having an anxiety attack. Remember the government videos! Focus on breathing!

I know! But I can’t stop holding myself down! I’ll fly apart! I’ll get sucked away! I tried to listen to the voice but it spiraled away. I was spiraling, too. Not down, but out – out from my desk, out toward the hall.

Where the package waited.

Some twist of gravity twisted my stomach and lungs like I’d wring out a washrag. The face on my skin felt like it was pulling it away from my skull. Bile rose up into my throat, threatening to choke me. My fingers dug into the clothbound arms of my metal chair so hard that I felt two fingernails rip completely off. Blinding, white pain flashed through me and I opened my mouth to scream. When no sound came out, I realized I’d stopped breathing entirely.

I gaped like a fish ripped from the water. No air came in, no sound came out. I thrashed in my chair. Nothing. From somewhere, I got the strength to thrust my body backwards hard against the chair back. My head ground painfully into the headrest. Another fingernail splintered. I felt blood spray onto my arm. My legs spasmed as I struggled to get oxygen to my dying lungs. My body jerked uncontrollably like I was seizing. My right foot lashed out and struck something. I heard a loud crack. I felt pain and wetness. My foot was bleeding.

My eyes snapped open. I’d hit the security monitor with my bare heel, fracturing the screen and leaving a bloody smudge. The monitor had powered back on, though, and still worked. There sat the box, but for some reason, my eyes focused on the mat this time. I put all the energy I had left into forcing the shattered image of that mat on the screen into my fading brain. The package was there still, but so was the mat. The old worn mat my mom had put on the porch for my dad to wipe his work shoes on. The raised ivy border, most of it flecked away over the years but enduring as discolored, ivy-shaped blotches against the background. The wide, overflowing flower basket that had barely kept any color at all after cleaning so many dirty soles. The faded remnants of a fancy script that like so much else in the world had fragmented and lost pieces of itself. In a happier time the mat had announced Welcome to our Friends. Now it greeted my frantic, bulging eyes with this message: We_come to ___end_.

A racking gasp of air invaded my body. I shuddered. My back arched. I gasped again. Air filled my deflated lungs. My good luck charm had worked. Concentrating on the mat had saved me. The tiny voice came back. It whispered, Breathe! I breathed. I hurt all over. I bled. My head and heart pounded. But I breathed.

I lived.

I’d survived the delivery.

But I still have to open the package…

Sleep Tight -- Don't Let the Bedbugs Google!

Three small black puppy noses popped up over the side of their broad yellow wicker basket.

Sniff!
Sugar smelled something good.

Snuff!
Snips smelled something delicious.

Snort!

Snails smelled something scrumptious!

Three tiny pink tongues slipped out of puppy mouths above the brim of their wide yellow wicker basket.

Lick!
Sugar was hungry.

Lap!
Snips was starving.

Slurp!
Snails was voracious!

Three little, sharp sets of white puppy teeth munched at the rim of their ample yellow wicker basket.

Nibble!
Sugar wanted a tasty tidbit.

Gnaw!
Snips wanted a mouthwatering morsel.

Chomp!
Snails wanted a delectable delicacy!

Three miniature, furry pairs of puppy paws appeared on the top edge of their extensive yellow basket.

Bounce!
Sugar hopped out the basket!

Spring!
Snips jumped out of the basket!

Leap!
Snails bounded out of the basket!


Three pint-sized, energetic puppy bodies raced away from the yellow wicker basket toward the wonderful smell.

Zip!
Sugar dashed into the kitchen!

Zoom!
Snips sprinted into the kitchen!

Whoosh!
Snails scurried into the kitchen!

Three diminutive, grinning puppy faces barked at the yelling woman burning food in the kitchen.

Yip!
Sugar asked the woman for some goodies!

Yap!
Snips begged the woman for some munchies!

Yelp!
Snails implored with the woman for a nosh!

Three miniscule, drooling puppy mouths swallowed hot chunks of scorched ham sandwiches.

Gulp!
Sugar bolted down up her sandwich!

Gobble!
Snips wolfed down his sandwich!

Glutch!
Snails scarfed down his sandwich!


Three teensy-weensy puppy tails shook happily at the smiling woman who loved her puppies.

Wag! Wiggle! Waggle!
Sugar, Snips, and Snails thanked the woman for sharing!

Between a Rock and Googly Place

My life – it takes no wooded path
with a leafy roof to shade my head.
My road – it bumps over dirt and stone
on these wild hillsides I must tread.

My life – it offers no green embrace
on these treeless hills from rain or wind.
My road – it struggles up this earthen face
that crumbles and breaks and crumbles again.


My life – it changes, as brief as the dew
as quick as a whimper, as fragile as frost.
My road – it branches, and never in two,
more like shattered glass than merely a cross.

My life – it isn’t confined to white or to black,
it’s a chaotic palette that all choices defy.
My road – it diverges into so many tracks
that I must stare at my steps instead of the sky.

I've Got Friends in Low Googles

Dear Diary,

I haven’t forgotten you! I know that you’re jealous of my computer, but I’ll always be a pen and paper girl at heart. You can count on that! Plus I have to tell you about last night.

It was awful! You know I finally got together with my local SWIBS forum. You know, the Singles with Irritable Bowel Syndrome group I post with online? I wasn’t sure about going in the first place, but I thought it might be cool. So anyway I went, and I was pretty tense about it. Remember how much I agonized about picking the right outfit? Well, the reality of meeting them in person was even worse than I ever could have possibly imagined.

First of all, the whole party was the brainchild of the moderator of our forum – his user name is AchyBreakyBrad. I’ve mentioned him before to you, but I never talked about how he was the one who put this whole holiday party together. He’s been posting about it since Labor Day (I went back and checked the archives to make sure). Well, anyway, he’s said all along that his work had a nice big meeting area that we’d all be really comfortable in. He got us all worked up and excited, talking about holiday decorations, music, a Stingy Santa exchange, and most of all getting to have a meal with other people who have IBS. That’s what finally made me decide to go. I hate going to all the other Christmas parties – work, church, even family – because there’s so much that I just can’t eat. And I never can take a date because they think I’m being stuck up for not eating or they’re stuck with me being in the bathroom all night. That’s not fun for anybody, but you know that already, don’t you, Diary?

Well, anyway, I went, and it was horrible. First of all, this grand meeting place that AchyBreakyBrad had lined up wasn’t close to what I imagined. The address he gave me was an ugly brick building with a big sign that screamed ELOM in green capital letters. I actually called him on the cell he gave out because I thought I had the wrong. It wasn’t though. The great meeting place he had lined up was the conference room at his work! OMG!! What a fantastic place!! Wow!! How did he ever get that reserved with all the holiday rush?!

Hey! Don’t get me wrong! I’m not a snob. If he had worked at a hotel or a country club or even a restaurant, I’d have been cool with meeting there. But turns out that ELOM is some kind of Information Systems Development company – in other words a place where a bunch of computer geeks worked. The “Festivities Room” as AchyBreakyBrad called it was a room with some long conference tables pushed together, and there was computer junk crammed all along the walls. There were charts and computer code mumbo jumbo written on white boards and paper taped to the walls. He thought it was cool because we were an internet group. He kept cracking computer jokes and calling our party a “holiday interface” and telling us to “sync” and “upload” snacks. I thought he was kinda funny online, but in real life? No way, I’d rather drink salsa than spend any more time with him?

So the room sucked. But decorations could have made it work. He said that he was going to take care of the decorations and music if we all brought the food. Cool, I thought, but listen to what he did. Well, he put some tacky little trees on the tables that looked like he’d taken them out of some business’s landscaping. He’d bought some red and green plastic plates and napkins. And the most exciting thing was that he made us wear little holiday hats that he bragged about buying in bulk from some party store online. They were cheap and way too small, probably made for American kids by orphaned kids in some foreign sweatshop.

I wore a snowman hat. It looked ridiculous. I felt like my head was eight sizes too big with that tiny little hat on. Not the best thing to be wearing when you’re meeting a bunch of people for the first time, let me tell you! Not that any of them looked much better. Why can’t any hot single people have IBS? Or maybe they do, but they have better things to do on the Friday before Christmas than meet with a bunch of complaining internet junkies.

Anyway, as if things weren’t bad enough, AchyBreakyBrad pulled out these nametags he’d printed off and made like we were the elves and had to wear them. I really wanted to leave when I saw that he written our user names on the tags. And that’s all! He didn’t put our real names on them! How stupid and lame is that! It’s one thing to type messages back and forth to FuzzySquirrelKiss, but when you find out FuzzySquirrelKiss is a fat middle-aged guy with really hairy arms and bad rosacea, you really would like to be able to call him Tom or Dave or something! He should have at least put our real names on the bottom of the tags or handed out a list or something. I made sure that I said something first when I talked to anybody. I kept sticking my hand out and saying, “I’m Tess!” so that people wouldn’t call me JDeppIsAhottie96. Diary, my user name just doesn’t seem as cool when it’s spoken out loud.

Now, here comes my take on the party music. It stunk! He had all the computers signed on to some music site that played Christmas MIDI’s. Enough said. They weren’t even all in sync. You can imagine how awful that was.

My last hope was for the gift exchange, but that bombed, too. I’ll have to say that this part wasn’t AchyBreakyBrad’s fault. I don’t know what he brought, but too many SWIBS had the same idea I did and brought Tums or Rolaids or Pepto for their gift. Needless to say, I went toward the end and there wasn’t much to pick from when I wanted to trade. So I ended up just bringing home the Nacho Libre poster I opened. I’m not sure if I was one of the lucky ones or not. I’ve never even seen that movie, so I don’t know if it’s funny, but I do know that Jack Black isn’t exactly eye candy in my book. He’s no Johnny Depp, but that’s obvious, right, Diary!!

Back to the party. To top it off and make the whole night even worse, I got deathly sick from the food. How sad is that? You’d think a bunch of people with IBS would be more careful about what they bring to a Christmas potluck meet and greet, but no, not the brainiacs in my SWIBS group. Some idiot even brought sausage balls. She said they were tofu, but I ate a bite of one and bloated almost immediately. I hid the nasty thing under a keyboard on one of the computer tables, but the damage had already been done. I left pretty quick – made up a story about having to meet my sister in Yahoo Group chat to talk about family stuff, pretty smart, huh? And just in time, too, AchyBreakyBrad started doing karaoke to the Christmas MIDI’s with this fat lady who looked a lot like my old bus driver back in elementary school. The lady’s tag said MissyKittenPie – I talked to her a little while while she was loading her plate up with everything people brought. I don’t see how anyone with IBS could eat that much! And I remember MissyKittenPie’s posts online – she always said that she was in her thirties and talked all the time about she could never eat. Yeah right! The only thing about her even remotely close to bein gin the thirties might have been her pants size! LOL! I’m so bad! Sorry, Diary!

Anyway, I left the party ASAP but didn’t even make it home before I had to stop! I felt that bad! I made it to a Krystal’s to use their bathroom – that’s how desperate I was! You know that IBS and Krystal just don’t mix. I’m surprised I even made it out of there, but that’s another story, and it’s getting late.

Bye for now, Diary! Thank your for listening!

P.S. Diary, you’ll be glad to know that I just signed off with SWIBS for the last time. I deleted my posts and everything. Now that some of the people there know what I look like, it’s just too embarrassing to talk about my bowels. Plus, I know what they look like, too. I read one post and got a really gross picture in my head of FuzzySquirrelKiss sitting on the toilet! Ewwww! I had to quit SWIBS right then. I just can’t talk to those people anymore. It’s just too embarrassing. I think I’ll go check out a group called ThePeople_of_SpasticColon_y – it sounds like they might be fun! TTYL!

Somewhere Over the Google

If Ham had stayed where he belonged , he would never have found the rainbow.

He wanted to share his beautiful discovery, but no one would climb as high as he had.

So, he watched the gorgeous arch of colors all by himself. The rainbow didn’t stay long. Misty clouds above the rainforest dropped down and cloudy mists rose up from the foliage. Together, they hid the rainbow from sight.

Then, very slowly and very sadly, he lowered himself hand over feet, down through the treetops, to where his six brothers and sisters were waiting on a broad branch in the all-too-familiar canopy.

“You’re going to be in trouble!” his brother Rocky yelled out when Ham’s face popped out of the thick leafy ceiling over their heads.

“Mother’s going to be mad!” his brother Mooch shouted as he swung his body down through the leaves and dangled his feet just above their frowning faces.

“We’re telling!” sang his sisters Spark, Missy, Gee, and Little Doodies when he dropped down right in front of them onto their branch. Then, with a nasty laugh, all of his brothers and sisters leapt away, from branch to branch, in the direction of home.

Ham sighed. He looked up at the tangle of leaves and branches, vines and flowers. He cocked his head at the sound of twittering birds and buzzing insects. He flared his nostrils to absorb the rainforest smells – some sweet and fragrant, some stinky and rotten. He opened his mouth and pretended to taste everything on his pink tongue.

Nothing could make him forget. He missed the rainbow.

When he finally arrived home, he was very late. He had not leapt from branch to branch. He had not swung on liana vines. He had moved very slowly, pretending to be one of those odd upside-down animals who always ignored his questions and never laughed at any of his tricks.

His brothers and sisters were waiting on the branch just below their family nest.

“We told!” Spark, Missy, Gee, and Little Doodies giggled.

“Mother’s mad,” Mooch chortled.

“You’re in trouble!” Rocky sniggered.

Ham ignored them and climbed into his nest.

His mother pointed a long finger at him, “Your brothers and sisters told me what you did. Do you have any idea how mad I am and how much trouble you are in?”

Ham sat and stared at his feet. His tail wrapped nervously around his waist. He held its tip in both hands. “I wanted to see over the treetops.”

His mother threw her head back and howled once at the puzzle of leafy branches that blocked every bit of the sky. Their rainforest neighbors echoed her angry shout. Ham heard his brothers, his sisters, lots of other monkeys, all kinds of birds, and even what sounded like a jungle cat from way down in the shadowy understory. Ham gripped his tail tightly. He looked up into his mother’s fuming eyes.

She pointed at his chest. “What are you?”.

“A monkey,” he replied.

She nodded and gestured at the branches surrounding the nest. “Yes, and where do monkeys play?”

“In the canopy,” he answered softly.

She nodded and bared her teeth. “Yes! The canopy! Play there and stay there! Never go lower…”

Ham remembered the cat’s scream and nodded vigorously.

“…and never climb higher,” his mother warned. She stared at him as though waiting for him to nod. He didn’t.

“But monkeys climb trees,” he whispered instead. “And some trees go high, much higher than the canopy, way up into the clouds, up almost to the sky. If the trees go there, why can’t we climb all the way up, too?”

His mother arched her back and howled a second time, even louder than before. Ham wanted to cover his ears with his hands, but he just held his tail more tightly.

As the echoes died, she lowered her face close to his and hissed, “Why would we, Ham? There is no reason to go up there! We have everything we need right here in the canopy!” She waved at the nest around them.

Ham looked at the stockpiled of food his family had gathered. He looked at the plump greenish-purple figs, the funny-looking starfruits, the papayas, the heaped cacao nuts, and a even a few delicious beetles creeping about. He closed his eyes and thought about how fantastic all those things tasted. He remembered all the other wonderful things he’d seen and heard and smelt on the way back to the nest.

He opened his eyes and looked sadly at his mother. Behind her, he spied the eyes of his siblings peeking over the edge of the nest. He turned his back on them and covered his face with his hands. His mother had to lean in closely to hear his whispered words.

“But we don’t have any rainbows.”

Busy as a Google

“Did you know my ceiling has exactly 5,384 stars, Mr. Bailey?”

Miao!

Tony lay on his bed the wrong way. His socked feet were propped on his pillow, and his head was resting on his linked hands near the scratched and dinged footboard. On the matching dresser by the bed, a black cat had flicked its ears forward and mewed at the sound of the boy’s voice. Now, it stood. It yawned and stretched, arching its back and showing a white patch the size of a hen's egg on its chest. It jumped down onto the bed when the boy lazily reached out his right hand. He stroked the cat from its forehead back to to the tip of its tail and repeated, “5,384 stars. How about that, Mr. Bailey?”

Miao?

Tony scratched the black cat under his chin. The cat’s yellow eyes closed to slits and loud purring filled the boy’s bedroom. “I know they aren’t really stars, but look,” he stopped petting to point at one of the cream-colored ceiling tiles. They had a rough texture speckled with a pattern of little holes. Each hole was about the size of a pencil lead. Tony pointed at them with one finger. “See all those dots up there, Mr. Bailey?”

Miao!

The cat swiped gently at Tony’s hand and rubbed the side of his face against the boy’s chest. Tony started petting him again. “See how they are all kinda in little groups of five? Well, if I draw lines connecting those five little dots, it’ll look like a star.” Tony rolled his head to side and stared at the black cat. “You know how I know that, Mr. Bailey?”

Miao.

Mr. Bailey rubbed his side against Tony’s face and turned around to rub his other side in the same way. Tony laughed. The cat’s fur tickled his nose. He scrunched his face and stuck out his lower lip to blow a puff of air up at his nose. His nose itched now, and he rubbed it hard with his knuckles. “Look over in the corner. By the dresser. You see it? That’s how I know. But don’t tell Grandma? Okay, Mr. Bailey?”

Miao?

The black cat only wanted to be petted. It didn’t care about the half-dollar sized star Tony had drawn in the room’s darkest corner. Earlier in the afternoon, he’d used a red crayon to make lines between five dots right by the crown moulding. “Now, if I drew stars like that all across the tile, there’d be forty whole stars and nine half-stars.” He held both hands up high to show his cat nine fingers. “That makes forty-four stars and a half. And that’s just on one tile, Mr. Bailey.”

Miao!

Tony held one open hand down in front of the cat’s face. The cat pressed his wet nose hard back and forth against the fingers until the boy started stroking his back again. “I only drew one star though. I counted the rest in my head. Grandma’d notice forty-four and a half red stars, wouldn’t she?” The loud sound of women laughing made the boy and cat both look toward the closed bedroom door. “Don’t worry, that’s just Grandma and her quilt party downstairs. She told us to stay up here and behave, but I think they’re the ones being too noisy. Don’t you think so, Mr. Bailey?”

Miao.

The cat licked his paw. Then, he circled twice, curled his back against the boy’s side, and started to purr. Tony could feel the vibrations through his whole body. He touched the cat’s nose with one finger. The cat licked the fingertip once and then started to gently gnaw it with its side teeth. Tony pulled his finger away and giggled. He locked his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. “Now about the stars – where was I? I’d just told you about one tile, I think. Forty-four and a half stars on one tile. Just one tile. And look at how many tiles there are up there! I counted. Then, I just did the math. You don’t know the times tables, but I had to memorize them all, Mr. Bailey.”

miao

The mew was very quiet. Tony slowly rolled onto his side and curled around the black cat that was falling asleep. Yellow eyes flicked once to look at him but closed again after a brief yawn. “So that’s 5,384 stars on my ceiling. Plus a half, actually, but I threw the half away. Mrs. Fykes said that it’s okay to do that in math.” He lay quietly and still for a few minutes. Then, another noise from downstairs came muffled through the door. Tony couldn’t tell if it was laughter or something else. He yawned. “I wish they’d finish that quilt. After all that counting and multiplying stars, I can say I worked on school work and it’s not a lie. Then, I can watch my shows.” Another yawn claimed him. His eyes blinked slowly closed and then opened quick, only to fall shut again in only a second. After a third yawn, the boy whispered, “Maybe I’ll nap for a little while with you. Is that okay, Mr. Bailey?”

prrrrrrrrrrr...

Will the Google Be Unbroken?

“Mom, what does that sign say?”

“Which one, sweetie?”

“That one over there.”

“The stop sign? It says Stop.”

“NO! The orange one!”

“Calm down, sweetie. Mommie’s driving and can’t look right now, okay? Wait until I stop.”

“It’ll be gone then! I want to know what it said! It looked like a warning sign!”

“It probably was telling everyone to be quiet and let Mommie drive,” the mother joked. She glanced at the back of the van through her baby rear view mirror to see if that satisfied her oldest child’s curiosity. It hadn’t. He was frowning.

“It DID NOT say that!” “What did it SAY!”

“Do not shout at me while I am driving! Calm down or we’re going home!”

She kept driving, trying to watch the road in front of her and the back seat at the same time. In the mirror, she saw her son flail a bit in his seat. Then, he started pushing his body up on his arms, using the arm rests of his booster seat like a gymnast’s balance beams to strain against the seat belt’s shoulder harness. His eyes bugged with the effort. His nostrils flared with each breath. He stretched his mouth into a wide line. His lips pulled back. His teeth ground together. The tendons in his neck popped out clearly on his skinny neck. His face flushed beet red. In the carseat next to him, a smaller – and for once infinitely calmer – version of himself slept peacefully, draped over the buckle straps like a little ragdoll.

“Calm down! You’re making yourself sick! And you’re going to wake up your brother!”

The van stopped at a red light. She turned and met her son’s eyes, matching him glare for glare. He almost looked like he was snarling, but he didn’t say anything. She checked her other son. He had flopped his head up and then back down again like his neck was made of taffy. He still slept, though, completely oblivious to the trouble brewing beside him. The light changed, and the mother focused on the road.

The mother worried more about her younger son waking up. From lots of experience, tantrums were highly contagious in the minivan. It didn’t matter who started it or what it was about. Soon, all three children would be bawling and screaming like tiny banshees. They didn’t even need reasons.

She flicked her eyes to the mirror. Her son was glowering at her, still flushed and breathing heavily. His jaw stuck out stubbornly. He was being quiet, but they weren’t out of the danger zone. She looked past him to the empty carseat in the very back of the van. She whispered a quick prayer of gratitude that the baby at least wasn’t there to take part in the drama. Her little girl was the lucky one, playing at home with the daddy, while she took the boys on a few errands.

Suddenly, she heard an ambulance siren coming from behind her. She slowed down to let it pass in the left lane.

“Oooh! Look, an ambulance! Do you think someone up ahead got hurt?”

Her son said nothing. She started driving again but at the next curve saw that traffic had stopped completely. She groaned in dismay but tried to distract her son again.

“Looks like there’s a wreck up ahead, sweetie. We’re going to be stuck for a while, I guess. Did you hear the siren?”

Silence answered her from the back seat.

Since the van was stopped, she looked around into eyes that still were full of a five-year-old’s fury.

He raised one hand threateningly. Sunlight from the passenger windows glinted off the shiny silver bottom of a toy car he clutched in one small fist.

“I’m gonna throw this car at you!” her son announced with all the grim severity of a judge condemning a guilty man to the electric chair.

“Throw it and you’ll be in deep trouble, mister!”

She turned back to the steering wheel and canceled her earlier prayer. If her husband had come along, he would have made up some crazy story about the sign. Her son would have bought the lie or he would have laughed at how ridiculous it was and made up something of his own.

The car suddenly whizzed by her ear. It pinged off the windshield onto the passenger seat.

“That’s it! I’m calling your dad!” She reached between the bucket seats into her purse and yanked out her cell phone. She flipped it open and hit 1 to phone home.

Her son let loose for real now. He started screaming loud enough to carry through the van’s closed windows. Drops of spit actually began flying around in the back seat as though he were a rabid dog. His brother sat up and looked around groggily for a second before he started to cry. The mother shrunk a bit in her seat and kept from looking at the cars stopped around her for fear that they could hear. She stared at the bumper in front of her and pressed her phone hard against her ear. She counted the rings. Three, and then the voice she needed to hear said, “Hey – whoa! What’s up? Sounds like you’re murdering somebody!”

“Your son’s trying to murder me! Throwing cars at me while I’m driving!” she hissed, not in the mood to joke around. She didn’t think it was possible but the screams got louder when she said that.

“Talk to your son!” she yelled into the phone. She stuck her arm back toward her oldest son. He slammed himself back and forth in the seatbelt and ignored her.

“Talk to your dad!” she screamed.

“I’m not!”

He shook his head over and over and yelled twice more, but finally he snatched the phone out of her hand. She expected him to throw it but he didn’t. He stuck it to his ear and listened for probably one second. Then, he wailed one long piercing “NO!” that vibrated the mother’s ear drums. Wincing, she focused on trying to soothe her three-year-old, who was crying but hadn’t gone full-power yet.

She had one chance with him – he had a bottomless stomach, especially after a nap, and she had a granola bar and half a bottle of water in her purse. She worked on getting him to open his mouth for a bite.

The older boy cried and snorted and slobbered. He would put the phone to his ear and then wave it around for a few minutes. Amazingly, he never closed it or threw it across the van. By the time his little brother started alternating deep sobs with messy bites of granola, he was actually listening to whatever the dad was saying . The mother felt a glimmer of hope for the first time. She also felt a twinge of jealous anger, though, and whispered another prayer. This time she asked God why he had to give the dads more power over the kids than their mothers.

Traffic still wasn’t moving when her son finally handed her the phone.

“Dad wants, to talk, to you,” he stuttered, not yet able to breathe normally after his outburst. He swiping his other arm across his wet, crimson face. It came away covered in snot and tears. He rubbed it onto his shorts. “I want, a snack, too,” he added quietly as she took the phone. He smeared both hands across his face and then rubbed his eyes. She snapped what was left of the granola bar in half and handed both boys their share. She faced forward.

Her husband was laughing when she got the phone to her ear. “It’s not funny!” she snapped, still frustrated. Then, too low for the boys to hear, she whispered, “He was awful! He nearly pegged me in the back of the head with one of his cars!”

“Yeah, that’s why I told him his cars were going to Goodwill for some other well-behaved boy to play with.”

The mother nodded. “Ah, so that’s why he let out that awful scream right at the first!” The bumper in front of her moved. Traffic finally was starting to creep forward. She sighed in relief.

“Yeah, it got his attention. Then, I just had to wait for him to calm down enough to tell me what started it all.”

“The sign.” She said too loudly. She flinched and looked at the mirror. Sometimes, a word would trigger a second round of fits. Both boys had bits of granola stuck on their faces and were poking around at the tangle of toys between their seats. They stopped as the van came level with the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles. It was only a little bumper bender, but it got both of them jabbering with excitement. “Looks like whatever you told him worked. He’s over it now.”

“Yeah –you should have just made up something about the sign. You know he never gives up when he wants to know something.”

“Yeah, I wonder where he gets all that stubbornness from!” The dad laughed. “And for your information, Mr. Smartypants, I did make something up! I told him it said for him to be quiet and let me drive!”

“That’s such a mommy lie!” the dad laughed. “No kid would ever believe that!”

“Fine! You’re the better liar. I admit it!” she chuckled, feeling much better now that she was past the wreck and the tantrum both. “What did you tell him anyway?”

“Simple. You saw it near the park, right? I think that’s what he said anyway. It was hard to tell with all the crying. Well, anyway, I told him that he was right, it was a warning sign that told people to Beware of the Flautists!”

The mother burst out laughing. “And my lie was stupid? He actually bought that?”

“Sure he did! I had to explain it, of course. And flautists can be quite dangerous, you know. Especially at the park! If you drive or walk too close, they lash out with those metal flutes. Those things sting! They can break bones, too, or slash holes in tires. You really have to watch out for those flautists, sweetie!”

The mother shook her head even though her husband couldn’t see it. “You’re awful!”

“Hey, it worked, didn’t it? I just hope you guys don’t run into some real flautists today. It might freak him out.”

“Ha, that’d serve him right!” she giggled. “Little Sister’s being really quiet. Is she playing in her room?”

“Nah, she’s been asleep ever since you guys left. I was going to do some laundry, but I decided to play games online instead since you were out goofing around with the boys…”

The mother cursed and hung up the phone. Then, she prayed a third prayer, this time to keep her from killing her husband when she finally made it home.