Last night we took a few kids and my dad out for some sushi, or in my case, a salad, and a movie. We saw Alice In Wonderland. Not the best movie I have seen, but it was an enjoyable evening none the less.
On the ride down the street Hunter was recalling one of his worst memories of living here in California. It was the typical "remember when" chit chat and Hunter chose to "remember when" the sewer backed up and filled our bathtub. He recalled the floating poop and toilet paper in the sewer water and Brandon wading through it with a bucket and roto-rooter at our house till after midnight…. It was a memory that I would never choose to recall. I clearly pushed that one deep in my mind, but Hunter seemed to remember every stinking detail of the entire evening. Kids are extremely weird that way, add poop to any occasion and the memory will be firmly stuck in their minds for the rest of eternity.
After the movie, we were loading the car and Bronson shut his seat belt in the door and couldn't re-open the door to fix it. I had his door child-locked because I had taken Pickle with me earlier that day to pick up Hadley from school. My dad was curious about this child-lock thing and found it fascinating that I could enable or disable the child-lock feature at will. I reminded him of the time that I ran over Ty with the car (that is a post for another time, or not, since I like to forget it ever happened.) and explained why I always engaged the child-lock whenever Pickle was a passenger.
Hunter piped up from the back seat. "That (running over Ty) was one of the most disturbing things that has ever happened."
I said, "Oh Hunter man, I am so sorry, That must have been awful for you to witness as such a little guy. I feel terrible that you were there. You had a hell of a childhood. Between that and your parents getting divorced, its a wonder you turned out okay."
Hunter's respond to that, "Honestly, the poop in the tub was worse than anything."
…. We laughed till our guts hurt. If that right there doesn't show the resilience of kids….
I stew and stress and worry constantly about the things my kids will have to deal with and the scary world we live in and whether or not they are going to turn out okay living in this day and age…. And the worst effing thing that has ever happened to Hunter is to watch poop shoot out the tub drain? I think my kids may be worse off than I ever imagined!












