“It looksthatway.”
“You sure that’s agoodidea?”
“No.” I laughed. “It’s not a good idea at all, but I don’t have a choice. So what doyousay?”
A wide smile broke out across her face as she eyed me with a splash of mischief. “Heck, yeah, I want to go. This ought tobegood.”
“Yay. Yay. Triple yay!” Riley sang out, obsessively repeating the same phrase until Syd covered his mouth withherhand.
“I wouldn’t get too excited, Ri, he’s probably just taking us to some boringbabypark.”
It was obvious by her tone that Sydney had no faith in my abilities, but she underestimated me. I was no ordinary snack bitch. No. I was a goddamn rock star, and if I couldn’t bring the fun, no onecould.
“No, Syd, not a boring baby park,” I mimicked her condescending attitude. “We’ll go wherever you guys wanttogo.”
So that wasmy firstmistake.
Iwas such a rookie.Who let me off the bench in the first place? The only positive that came from my blunder was that I learned a valuable parenting lesson: never let kids be part of the decision making process when it came to outings. Because if you did, they’d choose Chuck E. Cheese everysingletime.
Mistake number two was requiring my niece and nephew to be clean and presentable. Unbeknownst to me, with kids this age, some assistance and assembly was required. Had I known what a production number it would become, I would’ve dragged two little snot monsters around all day and been happierforit.
Sydney refused my help, proclaiming she could manage the task on her own; but Riley – oh, Riley! – he was like three kids in one. The boy stood in the bathroom for five minutes just waiting for me to come in and turn the water on. He didn’t even bother to call me. He just waited there in the bathroom naked, driving his matchbox car all over the basin. Had I not popped my head in to see if he was done, he might have stood thereallday.
And once he did finally manage to shower, Riley needed help with everything. I had to towel dry his hair and brush his teeth and help him into his clothes and tie his shoes, all while he played. I had no idea what kids their ages should be capable of, but I was fairly convinced that Riley was just playing me so he didn’t have to do any ofthework.
My third mistake was inviting Lassen to comealong.
I knocked on his partition. “Lassen?”
He opened immediately like he was engaged in a game of peekaboo and let out a quick, joltinggrowl.
“Oh, shit.” Ijumpedback.
“Sorry, I thought you were the kids,” hegrumbled.
“That’s how you greet them?” I asked insurprise.
“What do you want, Jake?I’mbusy.”
“Since we both have the day off, I was thinking we could hang out… go to lunch orsomething.”
Instinctively I knew adding the kids into the equation would not go over well, so I chose to leave out that valuable piece of information. So too did I understand that any mention of Chuck E. Cheese’s would be viewed like the petri dish of death for a germaphobe like Lassen, so I omitted that too. At this point, my information was given out strictly on a need-to-knowbasis.
“All right. Sure,” he replied. “Thatsoundsfun.”
If he only knew just how much fun he was abouttohave…
Iwent backto check on the kids’ progress. Sydney was wearing purple sweats and an orange t-shirt with the saying, “The cool kid just showed up.” I had a good laugh at that before deeming her ready to go. Riley had switched the shirt I’d just dressed him in, and the neon yellow one he was now wearing was inside out, but once I corrected it, I was happy with my colorfultroops.
Mistake number four was having the kids say goodbye toCasey.
“Are you serious?” she asked me, just the hint of a smile onherface.
“What?”
“Jake, they can’t go out like that. Sydney doesn’t evenmatch.”
“Shedoesn’t?”
