The Almost Crisis

I don't have a parking pass that allows me to park on campus during the day. I was running late and did not have time to wait on my school's transit system before class started this past Friday. So I parked across the street from campus on a one-way street right beside one of the local bars. I paid the meter for an hour and a half and walked the short distance to my classroom.

After class, I nonchalantly walked back to my car. It had been a wonderful day thus far, and I had little to worry about... until I approached the car.

There is was: little, covered in pollen... with a huge dent and yellow paint scraped all over the black paint on the left side. I just stopped in my tracks, visibly stunned. It was awful. Someone had scraped up the car and then left without so much as leaving a note! After regaining my composure (somewhat), I approached the vehicle. In my panic, I didn't remember what to do since the person who had hit the car had left the scene. I decided to just get in the car and cry and call my mommy, like any rational adult would do.

As I get to the driver's side, I reach down to open the door. That's when I realized that this door was missing it's handles. The handles on the doors of the vehicle were gone. As in, I could not find a way into the car. There was nothing for me to open the door with. After standing there for a good minute or so without coming to a rational conclusion of what to do, I start to cry a little bit. That's when I noticed that through the back window, there were books and bags that I don't own sitting in the back seat. I go look at the vehicle's tag. It's not my tag.

It's not my car. I looked around, and sure enough, my car was sitting a few cars down from this poor vehicle. I happily walked down to my beautiful car and there's not any (new) damage on it! I still feel really terrible for that person who owned that other car, though. It was really not funny at the time.

I'm going to tell a little tale about my childhood... and how traumatic it was.

Do you remember how as a child it was so cool to talk about your parents' age? Yeah, so do I. And so when I was in Kindergarten I went home and asked my mother how old she was. And because she is a sweet mommy, she told me that she was 99 years of age.

So the next time when my peers began discussing the age of their parents, on the van ride to our after school care, I volunteered the information that my mother was 99. I thought I had won the prize - I had the oldest parent. I was so cool. And so happy.

But then this girl turned around and said something along the lines of, "your mom is going to die when she turns 100." I suppose that is how a young one's logic functions. 100 is the limit - there is nothing after 100.

So I took this new information presented to me as the absolute truth. I believed this with my entire being, and I was sad. I seriously thought my mother was going to die on her next birthday.

When I got home that evening, I threw myself onto my parents' bed and became hysterical. I was sobbing and inconsolable, and my mother was trying to figure out why. She finally figured out that I was sad because I thought she was going to die on her next birthday. Which was apparently hilarious to her. And my father.

It was finally explained to me that my mother wasn't 99 years old,  and even if she had been she probably wouldn't have died on her 100th birthday. Didn't matter to me then; I was quite distraught.

Moral of this story: don't lie to your kids, unless you want something really funny to happen.