A Day in the Life: My kids are mischievous, too!

For anyone who’s fairly new, I used to do a blog series on here where I’d talk about my personal life, everything from my husband’s wonderful comments on my stories to being swindled out of money at the cafeteria in the hospital my husband worked in to my two sons relationships. In short, I’m just like many of you. My husband likes to offer me “helpful” advice, my kids are wild and in just about every way possible, I’m just like everyone else. It’s been a while since I’ve done such a post, but something that happened yesterday was just too good to pass up–it actually reminded me of something one of the Taylor boys would pull on the show Home Improvement.

As mentioned the other day, I’ve moved further into the country. By doing so, I’m now about 40 minutes away from where my kids go to school.

So yesterday I’ve just had lunch with my husband (which belongs in a post all of its own) and I run into the nearest Lowes to get a new dryer vent. Just as I’m coming out, my phone rings:

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Mrs. Gordon?”

“Yes…”

“This is Mr. Smith, Eddie’s teacher–”

Silence fills the air. Has my son been hurt? I dismiss the thought fairly quickly, this is the kid who we’ve given the nickname Captain Safety to due to his cautious attitude. Plus, if he were hurt, the teacher would probably be a little more hysterical than this. Is he in trouble? This is more of a possibility as recently he’s become a little parrot and two weeks ago got in trouble for repeating a very…er…unkind word he’d heard from one of the older kids.

“Okay…”

Silence.

“Is this one of those calls where you’re about to tell me my son’s done something wrong and he’s in a lot of trouble, but you don’t know how to put into words what he’s done?” There I asked.

The teacher laughed. “Oh no. Not at all. It seems Eddie has lost his lunchbox.”

“Okay.” Seriously, that’s what he’s calling about??? He had me all worried about a missing lunchbox? Why didn’t he just come out and say that as soon as I answered the phone. I shook my head and just chalked it up to him being a man and difficult to figure out.

“I was wondering what you’d planned?”

Oh, I’d planned to drive forty minutes there to drop his lunch off in time for clean up for the day! Resisting the urge to say something sarcastic, I just said, “Can you get him hot lunch today and I’ll send the money for it tomorrow?” This seems like a simple fix to me, honestly I’m not even sure I needed to be called.

“Oh, okay. We can do that. I just wanted to make sure that’s what you wanted.”

He’s seven and he doesn’t have a lunch–just feed him, please. “Yes. I’m sorry he’s forgotten it, but if you can see that he gets a hot lunch today, I’ll send the four dollars and fifty cents tomorrow.” (That sum right there is exactly why it’s very rare or special occasions my kids get hot lunch.)

“Okay.”

*The phone goes quiet.”

I set the phone down and turn around in my seat to see if his lunch is on the backseat because I remember him putting it into his backpack this morning. Not that it’ll do anyone any good to find it, of course. At first glance, I don’t see it and pick up a forgotten coat–

*Ring! Ring! Ring!”

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mrs. Gordon, this is Mr. Smith again. I just wanted to let you know, we’ve found Eddie’s lunchbox! For some reason he’d taken it into the classroom instead of leaving it in his backpack in the hallway. I just wanted to let you know that that solves that.”

“Oh okay.” In my mind a theory forms, but I want to give my son the benefit of the doubt on things so I wait until we all get home and we’re in the middle of dinner.

“How did lunch go today, Eddie?”

A little (nervous?) smile takes his lips and he finds something oh so amusing about my Old Curiosity Shop dishes. “It was okay.”

“Hmm… Anything interesting happen at lunchtime?”

He shakes his head, but his cheeks grow a little pink. “No.”

Okay, so he doesn’t know that Mr. Smith called me. “Did you enjoy your lunch?”

His head shoots up and at the same time, my husband looks at me. “What’s this about?”

“Just wait,” I murmur to my husband. “Did you enjoy your lunch?”

“It was okay.”

My husband shoots me a quizzical expression.

Ignoring him, I try again to get my son to confirm my suspicion, but he doesn’t.

“What’s all this about anyway?” my husband asks again.

“Mr. Smith called me today, telling me that Eddie didn’t have a lunch and I told him to buy Eddie hot lunch instead.” I’m trying really, really hard not to give away too much or to laugh as it’s becoming very apparent my theory was correct.

“Did you have hot lunch today, Eddie?” my husband asks.

My son purses his lips and gives us that look that we long ago termed the stink eye. “No. Thankfully we found my lunchbox in time and I didn’t have to eat vegetarian hot dogs. I hate vegetarian hotdogs.”

Both me and my husband start laughing hysterically because he’s as good as told us that the missing lunchbox was suddenly found–under a pile of coats in the back corner of a forgotten cubby–as soon as he was told what was on the menu…

“Friday, son,” I gasp between bursts of giggles. “Friday is the pizza day this week.”

I don’t know which was funnier his look of disgust at almost having to eat the vegetarian hot dogs or the look of shock that came over his face when he knew I’d figured him out!

Considering two weeks ago my younger son was caught hiding his macaroni and cheese in his lunchbox, so not to eat it, and now my older son is hiding his lunchbox altogether to avoid my cooking, I might have to wonder about my cooking skills…