Later the Same Day

How can it be?  This is the very same day.  A day can toss you around, turn you upside down and leave you on your bum.  Wondering “what the heck?” We know nothing.  Just assume.

I assumed the water heater would be delivered today so Dad and your step mom would have hot water.  It broke on Tuesday, this is Saturday.  We agreed to wait for the Sears delivery and save a few bucks.  No word, no delivery, not installation, no hot water.  I avoid that store after too many poor sales reps and bad service…I thought online might be better, but installation from a place in Concord?  Excuse me, NO installation from a place in Concord.  No hot water.  And while I’m on the phone problem solving the singing stopped, the hair pulling, screeching and taunting (really…the Na-na-na-na-na song, you know!) Both crying and then a big crash.  Doll house falls.  Okay here’s our real life.  I made up the other part.

Grumpy, thinking about caffeine and longing for Sunday’s hand-off of kids.  The clock stopped and now is going around the dial on its own like crazy.  Its a satellite controlled time.  Maybe sun spots you suggest.  No, it needs a new battery screams Liza, throwing  tiny pig at him.  Ouch.  Push and scream.  Get in the car, we have to go to gymnastics.  Not a peep. Liza says under her breath, of course, “peep”.

You spin around in the waiting area.  I ask you to watch out for toddlers. You goes into the next room, while Liza lies down on the carpeted bleachers kicking and annoying a woman watching her daughter perform.  The lady grabs Liza’s leg to stop the pummeling. Then we all, everybody sees you on a small closed circuit t.v. screen You are in the work out room alone.  It’s you on t.v..  Look, says someone, what he’s doing.  Twenty people look.  He’s flapping, twirling, then on his back flapping his hands rapidly.  Its as if I am watching a film about autistic self-stimulating behaviors.  Then I think, maybe I am.  Oh, God.  I used to say you were pretending to be a chick.  Not today.  You run in a circle for the camera.  You spin, flap some more.

The woman next to me says, my son is autistic, too.  And she points to him in the gym.

I want to go home and play with the tiny pigs, those little hedgehogs.  I want the tiny TV spinning to stop.  Finally you stop. If I went in there I’d be on T.V too. I couldn’t bear that.

Now what?  Hot water. Is that first on the list?  gma

man jumping high while posing
Photo by Yogendra Singh on Pexels.com

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