6. Talk about a time you embarrassed yourself.
My daughter’s best friend lives next door. It’s been a pretty amazing experience watching them forge and maintain their friendship. They were born within days of each other so I have had the pleasure of watching both girls from when they were too young and shy to even say hello to each other, to now, waiting on each other’s doorstep every morning and walking to the school bus together.
The best friend’s family are very kind Sikh Indians with traditional values and I live in fear that they will discover my YouTube channel and blog and decide Maile’s family is too weird to be associated with. Not just that, maybe they won’t like the music Maile shares or our more relaxed rules or whatever sort of example we might inadvertently be setting for their daughter purely by her association with Maile.
So I try to keep my crazy hidden.
Sometimes I slip up.
There is a car that has delivered newspapers in our neighborhood for years. We don’t subscribe to a paper and yet this CAR just drives around tossing them out of windows and into peoples driveways. It drives me crazy because I never pick the paper up and bring it in and it ends up sitting in our driveway for weeks. And when I do pick it up, I throw it directly in the recycling bin. It’s a huge waste. I don’t want the paper. I get my news from the Internet like the rest of civilization.
The thing is, I don’t normally ever SEE the car making the deliveries, I only see another paper in my driveway. So I don’t have anyone to register my complaint with. I don’t even know who is driving that car.
The other day I was bringing Maile home from school and I noticed THAT CAR slow down in front of our house. Before I could shout at it to leave our house alone, it tossed the paper into our driveway and drove off. So I sped into my driveway, threw my minivan in park, jumped out, grabbed the paper, ran out into the middle of the street and chucked the paper as far as I could down the street at the car that was driving away while shouting, “I DON’T WANT YOUR PAPER!!!!”
My kids were still in the car looking at me wide eyed and I shrugged at them and was all, “well how are they ever going to learn?”
No sooner did I speak those words did I look past my kids to see that our neighbors had been stopped up the street at our mailbox and watched the entire episode unfold.
I replayed the scenario in my head from their perspective…without any background story. Just Maile’s mom running down the street throwing a newspaper at a strange car. When they pulled into their driveway I waved happily, “oh hi!!” and then sort of pointed at the street, “spose you saw that! hahaha! Yeah, I just don’t like that paper. You know how it is!”
They looked…a little surprised, but maybe not in a terrible way. Maybe surprised in a baffled, but in a slightly humored way.
I suppose next time I want to go throwing things at cars in the neighborhood, I should make sure I do not have an audience.
John Holton says
It’s a losing battle. I don’t know how many times we’ve confronted them, and they still throw their garbage on the driveway.
Gigi says
Hahahaha! I’ve been a long running battle with our newspaper – but mine is because for whatever reason they refuse to send me a bill and then end my subscription. This has been going on for a couple years now. I generally don’t read the paper cover to cover but I want that Life Section and the crosswords!
madamdreamweaver says
Hilarious. I take it, it’s a free paper. (If there were a bill, you’d have options to stop delivery.) We have a free local paper that’s thrown in everyone’s driveway every Wed willy-nilly. I like reading the police blotter in it. it’s entertaining. Luckily, Florida also has a recycling pickup and the trash company gives everyone special trash bins especially for that purpose.
Abby says
I literally laughed out loud at the image of you running into the street and chucking that newspaper trash at THAT CAR. I’d be willing to bet that your neighbors do “know how it is”. Hopefully