~ Gangnam Style ~

This was not the first time she’d done it to me.  We’d been down this road before.  Sometimes she would call, and beg me, sometimes I would catch it without her telling me.  But always it would end the same way:  I would have to make a special trip.

She’d forgotten her lunch box AGAIN.

This morning, I’d put together the most delicious, nutritious, fantastic lunch, complete with fancy-schmancy mixed fruit carbonated beverage, and gingerbread-shaped peeps for desert (did I say nutritious?), and actually brought it with me as we got into my car to leave for school.

She even asked me “Do you have my lunch?”   To which I replied by heaving it to her in the back seat.

We drove to school, Mother and daughter, alone and enjoying each other’s company in the quiet morning.   We arrived, she got out, dutifully kissed me goodbye, and headed into the school.

I drove home loving my sweet Varmint.  So old and wise for her age.  So competent, reliable, and consistent.

I arrived at our little cottage, turned off the car, and prepared to get out, when I saw this:

I DID say consistent, didn’t I?

I’m telling you, a person has to work at being this forgetful.  Nobody comes so poorly by it honestly.  She must be practicing some kind of 12 step plan to get this scatterbrained.   Maybe she has a life-coach teaching her or something.  It’s like I gave birth to the Absent-Minded Professor.  I keep waiting for her to break into Jerry Lewis impersonations.

“HEY LAAAAAADYYY!”

Of course I know she could just buy lunch at the school.  But now, NOW I was on a mission to get her to remember her own needs.  I knew what I had to do.

So I wrote her this note:

And I made sure I was at school when her lunch period started.

I positioned myself at the front of the hallway before the Cafeteria, and laid in wait.  She saw me.  Looked simultaneously chagrined and grateful, and came in for a very cutsie hug.

And that’s when I handed her the note.

She giggled.  Her friends gathered round on their way to lunch.  Varmint smirked at me with a challenge in her eyes as if to say, “You wouldn’t DARE.”

Oh, Sweet Varmint, I thought you knew me better than that.

And friends, I Gangnam –Style Danced all the way out the door.

In front of 100 6^th graders.

All glorious 220 pounds of me.

Wearing my nasty Crocs.

“HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO YOUR DAUGHTER???”  You cry?

Because sometimes nothing gets a point across like a 220-pound, middle-aged woman, Gangnam-Style Dancing out the door in nasty ol’ Crocs.