Thursday morning my nine-year-old son J was in his room getting ready for school when he shouted, “Mommy, have you seen the pants I wore yesterday?” I suggested he check the laundry (an odd place for dirty clothes, I know) and then added that he had plenty of clean pants in his closet. He explained that he didn’t want to wear the pants; he just needed to find them.
He came to the kitchen to find me with a very forlorn look on his face. I asked him what was the matter. He said, “I found the pants but I had something in the pocket and now it is gone.” When I asked him what it was he was looking for he answered, “My lucky sticky hand. I have a test today in social studies and I need it for luck. Have you seen it?”
Sticky hand, sticky hand, sticky hand … I repeated in my head until the light bulb went off. I had seen the sticky hand—the night before. My husband had found it on the floor and asked me what it was. I explained that it was that “prize” J had gotten at the orthodontist’s office for only being mildly awful when they put on his braces.
It was a surprisingly popular piece of junk. Usually that kind of stuff gets left in the back seat of the car with the empty Gatorades and goldfish cracker wrappers. But this J actually carried around and he threw it on the ceiling to see if it would stick and showed it to his friends … the sticky hand was top-notch junk.
But I thought the sticky hand’s popularity had waned—I had no idea it was lucky. So after I explained it’s life story to my husband, I told him to toss it in the trash.
Yikes! Bad mommy alert—what to do, what to do…. I did the only thing I could think of and said, “I did see it. Daddy was playing with it last night. Go look on his desk and if it is not there, I’ll call to see if he brought it to work.”
Okay yes, that wasn’t very nice to my husband but I was in a mommy panic and needed J to leave the room. When he did, I opened the cabinet where we keep the garbage and my heart did a happy leap. Score! We hadn’t taken out the trash yet! All the remnants of yesterday’s dinner were still there.
I know parents say they love their kids so much they would run in front of a speeding car for them. But lets face it, there is a high probability that most parents would have to make good on such a promise.
To me, love isn’t jumping in front of a speeding car—it’s sticking your hands your hands in the garbage … through the tomato sauce cans and the vegetable carcasses and the half-eaten chili so you can find the sticky hand.
I called out to Jason, “I found your sticky hand. You might want to wash it.” Both of our worried looks broke into big grins. “I suggest you wash the hand really well”, I said as I began scrubbing my own sticky hands. And I have to say, for a kid that showers his whole body in 10 seconds—he did a very through job washing that very sticky hand. AND he got a 98 on his social studies test.