Can I Get a Second Chance?

A homeschooling family we don’t know very well came by to borrow a curriculum we aren’t using. Before they arrived, I told the kids to pick up their toys a bit since we were making a “first impression”.

“When you meet someone for the first time, you don’t want to be wearing dirty clothes and have food in your teeth. Well, the same goes for your house.” (I believe this is a Confucius quote).

“Yeah, yeah”, they grumbled as little cars were thrown into a basket.

The family arrived, and we all crowded into the living room as the two youngest (our sons) decided they wanted to play trains. Belly tried to help set up the track with them as we watched. As she was about to finish the track, she noticed that she was faced with two pieces that would not join together.

“Mommy, we have two female ends, but we need a male or they won’t go together.”

Oh crap. At that moment I realized that most families probably do not use genitalia to describe their train tracks (hey, think of how easy explaining reproduction will be! “The mommy track waits for the daddy track. . .”). I cringed but said nothing.

Shortly after, the girls all ran giggling upstairs to play with dolls. I resisted the wicked urge to say, “boy, I hope they stay away from the guns, needles and porn” because I liked this mom and was not looking to scare her off. For the rest of the visit, we were all on our best behavior (except for D who refused to share his helicopter for no amount of bribing, begging or threatening).

After we were done discussing the curriculum, I took the mom upstairs to tell her girls it was time to go home. We entered the room, and I saw the girls happily playing with Barbies and horses and Little People.

And then my eyes traveled up the back wall of the room that used to be our office, but is now the kids’ playroom. Here is what I saw:

Oh, hell.

Comments

  1. Blog Antagonist says

    See…if I were meeting you for the first time, and I saw that, I would be like…”YES! This Chick is normal and okay and now I can stop acting like such a Pollyanna!”

    I bet she didn’t even notice it, but if she did, odds are, she thought the same thing. And if she didn’t, then you don’t need her anyway.

  2. Yeah, I can see how that might be a hard one to recover from.

  3. Awesome.

    We do make the effort to pick up the house before new – and even old – friend come over, but we don’t make any effort to hide the 500+ heavy-metal CDs (no, really) on the wall in the living room, or evidence of my knitting obsession… both overabundant, in their own ways. I figure, I’d rather scare them off right up front than form an attachment and then scare them off.

  4. And she probably thought, that is so cool!

  5. Anonymous says

    If they have bad taste in music, then you don’t need them as friends…. 😉

  6. ROFL.

    Personally? It would make me like you more.

  7. Mary Alice says

    snort!!

  8. Traceytreasure says

    At least the kids weren’t playing with knives and guns! Great picture!

  9. This post made me laugh out loud! that is too funny! You are definitely one of the cool homeschooling families!

  10. We’re you playing, “Big Red Rocket of Love” on the stereo?

  11. Hey, I found myself singing along to “It’s my f*cked up ford” the other day. niiiiiice.

    Daddy would be proud that you refer to connecting pieces as female and male. That’s what I learned. Funny, mom and day never did teach us much about the birds and the bees though.

  12. The FO Family is too cool to associate with anyone who would actually take offense to that picture. I have been to your house enough times to know I have never given that a second glance.

    I wouldn’t worry.

  13. Chicky Chicky Baby says

    That would have left one hell of an impression on me. I would have asked you immediately to become my new best friend!

  14. I believe it was Rev Horton Heat who had the deeply wrong but really hilarious “Road Kill Calendar”. And the “Elvis’s weight on different planets” t-shirt.

    Noice poster in any case, dood.

  15. Alpha DogMa says

    Please. Please. Move to my area. I will judge you. In good ways! We’ll be homeschooling buddies!

  16. they were probably REALLY pissed at seeing that poster and thought to themselves “How utterly uncouth! Everyone knows the band had to change its name to the Amazing Crowns…”

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