I hate to have to tell my son this, but most people in the USA do not get valet service to school.
There’s nothing unusual about today except that it’s Monday and that means you-know-who has had a weekend to chill out, and that he takes exception to the fact that he has to get out of his cozy little room and go out into the world like the rest of us.
Brad and I were trying to be nice. We really were. Brad starts calling to him around 5:30. He’s as nice as he can be, and even takes him chicken (Charley’s personal favorite), and tells him it’s time to start waking up for the bus. The bus picks Charley up right out in front of our house.
Ten minutes later Brad is back in the room again, this time standing over the bed.
No response.
“Charley, it’s time to get up,” he says.
No response.
“Okay, I guess I’ll just have to stand here until you show some signs of life.”
“Go away,” a voice says from under the covers.
“You’ve got one half hour and the bus will be here,” Brad says.
Another 15 minutes pass. This time I go to his room.
“Son, you are going to miss the bus, now you’ve got to get up.”
“Go away.”
“Tell you what, you get up and I’ll go away,” I say.
The Superman blanket is tucked nicely around every square inch of his body.
I reach under the covers and tickle his toes.
"Stop it Mommyhead!"
Next I start to pull the covers back.
"Are you coming out or do I have to come in there after you?" I say.
“Go away, I’ll kick you,” he yells.
“You had better NOTt kick me, or you will be in big time trouble, buster,” I say, and walk around his bed to turn off his fan. He just hates that.
“Go away, JERK!”
“Did you just call me a jerk? Now that’s NOT nice,” I say, “Get your hind end out of the bed,the bus is on its way.”
“I NOT going.”
“Oh yes you are.”
"No Not."
I leave the room to collect my composure. The last thing I want to do is melt down and start yelling at him because then he shuts down completely and then good luck getting him to do anything.
He is playing a game with us. He does this every Monday morning. He’s as rude and mean as he can be and then says, “I play game with you guys.”
Well I’ve had it with the game. One of the things he hates the most is when I walk out to the school bus. He thinks this is treating him like a baby, but you know what? This morning he has forfeited his "I'm a big boy" rights by being so ornery, So I think I’ll just mosey out to the bus when it gets here. Either he’s out of the bed with his shoes on, or…
“I’m going to have to go out to the bus,” I say.
“No not.”
“Yes I am,” I say, “This is your last and final warning.”
No movement.
The bus has just pulled up.
“Crystal is here,” I say.
“No not.”
Okay, time to play dirty. I throw Brad’s coat over me and shut the door loud enough for him to hear it, and proceed to go out to the bus to have a little chat with Crystal (the bus driver), and I ask her to give him a lecture on not making the bus wait for him. I tell her to tell him that the next time he pulls this little joke of his that she is going to drive off without him.
He knows what that means. The TV will be taken out of his room and we will spend the day scouring every inch of the house. It will not be fun for either one of us, and that’s a promise, but at least I will have a clean house.
He will beg, cry, and plead for me to give back the TV, but I am the terminator of all mothers and will carry the remote control around in my pocket and make it stick out just enough so he can see it, and he will pay the price for being ugly to us and making Crystal wait, and the day will be spent in hard labor and the bathtub will get scrubbed. Oh, did I forget to mention the toilets? I will hate the day because we will spend it fighting and he will put his arms around my neck and kiss me on the cheek and try his best to sweet talk me which always melts me like butter, and it will kill me but I won’t give an inch.
One thing is for sure, he’d better get his hinny out here to this bus in about 2 seconds or it’s all over but the crying.
Okay, so I’m on the bus and talking with Crystal and suggest that she play the Mr. Bailey card which means she’s going to tell Mr. Bailey on him, and this, along with a stern tone of voice will get his attention because he just loves Crystal and doesn’t want to be out of favor with either her or Mr. Bailey.
Crystal says she’s not mad at him but that she can fake it and will give him a good talking-to and all I can think about is how Charley got kicked off the bus when we first moved here to Tennessee. It seems he was trying to play a joke on the bus driver and swiped his hat off of his head, and the bus driver had no sense of humor whatsoever, and well, the next think we knew we were sitting in a meeting in the Principal’s office being told that Charley was no longer allowed to ride the regular bus which removed all doubt that I was probably NOT going to be nominated for Mother of the Year.
And now here I stand, talking with Crystal who couldn’t be any nicer if she tried, and I’m probably going to have to sit him down later today and remind him of how he was kicked off of the bus a couple of years ago and that if he wants to continue to ride Crystal's bus he’d better get his act together or heads are gonna roll.
Brad steps out onto the porch and yells to me. I know what he wants. He wants me to come back to the house because Charley won’t come out to the bus if he thinks I’m telling on him to Crystal.
I know Brad wouldn’t be calling to me unless the turkey bird is ready to get on the bus, so I go back to the house.
I can tell he’s been in trouble with his Dad because he steps out onto the porch and throws his arms around me. “I love you Mom,” he says with a weepy expression on his face.
“I love you too son, but you are in trouble,” I say.
“I love you Dad,” he says.
“I love you too son, here, take your medicine,” Brad says and hands him a cup with some liquid medicine that Charley takes every morning. He walks right past the cup and heads down the stairs, crosses the lawn and steps up onto the bus.
Well, here I go again, back out to the bus, and I hand him the cup and he drinks it.
I tell him I’m disappointed that he’s put his Dad and me through so much stress and I stand there waiting for an apology that I am not about to get, and finally I turn around and go back to the house.
Brad and I stand on the porch watching the lights from the bus disappear out of sight and I consider going back to bed and pulling the covers over my head. In fact, that's exactly what I'm going to do. Later when he gets home from school and wants his snack, I'm going to hide under the covers and refuse to come out. That'll fix him.
Then he will ask if I'm sick, and I will tell him "Yes, I'm sick, thank you very much," sick of him not getting out of bed in the morning and that he's worn me to a frazzle and sorry about that but I just don't have the energy to fix him his chicken. That ought to do it.
So I come back into the house to thaw out and sit down at the computer to write about my son behind his back, and I’m off to a good start and my fingers are just flying on the keyboard and I’m using a few choice words which I will just have to delete before I put it out onto the blog, when the phone rings. It’s Crystal on the other end saying that Charley wants to apologize for his behavior. I’ll just bet he does.
“Hello,” I say into the phone.
“Mommy, I warry,” (Sorry) he says.
“What did you do wrong?” I say, trying to get him to understand what he had done.
“Oh no, this again,” he says.
“Son, that’s not a funny joke,” I say.
“Warry.”
“You gonna get up and out of the bed tomorrow like you are supposed to?”
“Yea.”
“And no more of this refusing to be ready for the bus on time?”
“Yea.”
“You promise?”
“I promise,” he says. I can tell from his tone of voice that he means it. Until the next time, of course.
“Okay son, you have a good day and remember, you promised.”
“I warry, Mom, I love you.”
“I love you too, son.”
“Tell Dad I warry.” He says.
“Here tell him yourself,” I say and hand the phone to Brad who tells him that he accepts Charley’s apology and then tells him that he loves him very much.
Yep, it’s Monday.
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