Just a Quick Oil Change

We should have aborted the mission. The omens were bad. The entrails of wild animals were fraught with all the things with which wild animal entrails should not be fraught. But we, confident in our parenting skills and desperate to get the oil changed in both cars, persisted. Will we never learn?

As soon as we arrived at the shop and got the kids out of the cars, the first omen appeared: my son had wet pants. He's not potty-trained yet (sigh) and had just been changed before we left the house ten minutes earlier, but now one leg was just soaked. Such a diaper leak is very rare. Still, I did not see the omens. "No problem," I said. "We'll just buy a new pair of pants at the shopping center and change him in the bathroom." We were planning to shop while the cars were being worked on anyway.

So just a few minutes later we had already found a suitable change of clothes. My husband headed to the check-out counter with my son while I took my daughter to get a cart to let the kids ride in -- there weren't any carts at the entrance we had used. As soon as I put my daughter into the cart, she began to scream. The kind of screaming that makes even the nicest customers lose their patience. The kind of scream at the exact frequency that triggers an involuntary contraction of the facial muscles into a scowl. And believe me, I was scowling as well.

I learned when my son was that age that giving in to the screaming is just asking for more screaming later, so I opted to let her scream it out. Of course, my son was never one to scream like that. I pushed the cart, its red-faced siren blaring, toward the check-out counter -- you know, to let my husband know where we were in case he had suffered sudden profound bilateral sensorineural hearing loss since I last saw him. He was just finishing his purchase and glanced our way, then slumped his shoulders, shook his head, and said something to the cashier that made her laugh. He later told me he had said, "I'm going back to my own private hell now."

So then my husband headed to the restroom to change the boy, which I hear was no easy task. I, meanwhile, pushed the cart as quickly as I could, attempting to travel faster than the speed of sound so that no one else would hear the scream or scowl the scowl. It didn't work, and then I saw an exit. I rounded a corner with precision and headed for the open door, thinking her screams would be lost in the sounds of traffic in the parking lot and that she could finish her fit out there. But she saw the exit, guessed my plan, and popped her thumb into her mouth, silencing her fit and saving the rest for later.

As I headed back to the part of the store where the restroom is, sweet sounds like, "Apple, Mommy!" and "Balloon, Mommy!" issued from her angelic mouth -- that same mouth -- drawing smiles from strangers. Surely all was well now.

Before long, we were all shopping happily. We put some charcoal into the cart. My son, who was riding in the basket part of the cart, decided he wanted to use the bag of charcoal as a bed. He pushed and pulled and re-arranged the bag but just wasn't able to find a comfortable way to lie. On a bag of charcoal. This frustrated him. Before long he was screaming, "HOW DO I SLEEP ON IT?"

My husband shushed him while I quickly arranged the charcoal bag and explained he could use it as a cushion behind his back. This calmed him, but the attention we were giving him angered the teething one, and the hideous screams began again. We were ready to ignore her -- and the scowls -- when she, in her hysterical flailing, banged her chin on the cart. So of course, I had to take her out to comfort her and check out the boo-boo and kiss it and make sure it wasn't bleeding. Her chin was a bit red, but she wasn't seriously hurt and stopped crying almost instantly. And of course, you know that once a kid is out of the cart, there is no putting her back in. That's just the law of nature. It's like birth -- once they're born, they can't go back in. The exit has been completed.

So I carried her until I thought my arms might fall off. Then my husband suggested we do a little grocery shopping. Sure, I said, because I knew where there was a bench my daughter and I could sit on while the guys shopped. We sat for a good long while until my daughter decided she wanted to walk.

"Hold hand, Mommy," she was saying, struggling to get out of my arms and onto her feet. Fine, I thought. She can walk, and we can join the guys for the rest of the shopping trip. We found them before long. All we had to do was follow the sound of my son's yelling. He wasn't crying, just making annoying shrieking sounds that would have landed him in the car in a heartbeat if the car hadn't been in the shop getting its oil changed. But as I was saying, they were easy to find, and our shopping trip continued. As we headed up the frozen foods aisle, my daughter decided she wanted to stoop and pick up every piece of dirt on the floor. She alternated between the stooping and the running in front of me and yelling, "Pick up, Mommy!"

I muttered to my husband, "My patience is gone." He nodded sympathetically, reached into the freezer, and pulled out two containers of Ben and Jerry's, one of which I could see was Coffee Heath Bar Crunch. Oh, yeah. I just found my second wind.

So we found the endurance to check out and trudge back to the auto shop. As we were checking out our groceries, though, I noted with horror that the only fruit or vegetable in the entire purchase was the bag of cherries I had grabbed right as we were heading to the check-out. I was getting the "look what the fat lady's buying" glances from the other customers, and I wanted to scream, "But it was the THIN one who did the shopping! I was busy doing damage control!"

There is a rule, you know. If you're fat and you're going to the store, even if it's to pick up eggs for a birthday cake you're baking for an anorexic neighbor, you MUST purchase at least one vegetable. Fresh spinach is best. If you can afford organic, that's even better. If you do not follow this rule, you'll get the sneers and the evil eye. Or you could always go the opposite route and get on your cell phone (assuming you have one -- I don't) and pretend to call someone, saying, "Do you think a dozen eggs is enough to make myself that six-cheese omelet? I need an afternoon snack before my dinner of fried cheese and pork rinds." Either way, don't be caught shopping fat without a plan.

And whatever you do, if you have small children, don't change the oil in both your cars on the same day; there should always be a get-away vehicle. According to the stickers on our car windshields, we don't have to think about doing this again until September. That gives us three months to think this through, to make the plans, to examine the entrails, to do some potty-training. And to learn how to change our own oil.