Monday, August 29, 2011

Rooster in the Road!

     My Rooster.  I just love him to PIECES.  He says the darnedest things.


     Wait, is darnedest a word?  Have I spelled it right? 

     Regardless, we've had the darnedest day, he and I.

     It all started with a phone call.  From a number I didn't recognize.  Cricket's voice on the other end.  Just minutes after they both headed off to the school bus stop.  This couldn't be good.

     "Hey, well if Rooster doesn't make it home in the next 30 minutes, you have to come get him now."

     "Cricket, is that you?  Where are you?  What's going on? Are you alright?"

     "It's not ME Mom, it's Rooster.  You have to come get him, he fell down.  Oh wait, he's getting up.  Nevermind."  Click.

     So if this was a conversation with your child that would freak you out, you're in good company.  I was a little freaked.  But you must also realize that conversations like this are not unusual around here, living in the nuthouse.  I've been working really hard on not over-reacting to weird junk like this.  Take for example:  When Cricket was about three, he'd been rehearsing for three months at church on Wednesday nights for the preschool Christmas pageant.  I was informed that every child would have a costume made for them by a team of talented ladies at the church, no problems.  A few weeks before the big day, I started asking questions... What did I need to do?  Nothing, it's taken care of.  Seriously, what do I need to be doing to get ready for this?  Absolutely nothing.  Don't worry about it, just show up.

     And show up I did.  There was no costume.  I started asking around.  I got blank stares.  I was asked if I'd gotten their emails and letters.  Uh, well no, I wouldn't have been asking every week if I needed to be doing anything if there had been letters and emails.  I was asked if he had been at the rehearsals every week.  Uhm, yes, all but one in three months.  They had no record of him being there.

     What?

     So any reasonable person would have thought that this was a terrible clerical error.  But I was looking around this room of maybe 25 kids, with ALL of these teachers and thinking-- how on EARTH could they not remember a child being here for all of these months?  I know it's not an easy job, but COME ON!  So my mind went where no mom's mind ever wants to go.  Someone had been taking my son out of that room for an hour every Wednesday night and no one knew it.  WHO had been doing it, and WHY?  And Could Someone PLEASE Just Tell Me Where He's Been All This Time?

     Sanity entered stage left in the form of our children's pastor, who had been at many of the rehearsals and seen him there.  And slowly but surely, the women who had actually been in charge started coming around and assuring me that he had indeed been there, but somehow he'd just been left off of the list.  I felt like the idiot.  Because I'd acted like an idiot.  In front of a lot of people.

     To their credit, the costume ladies had him in a costume by the time the program began.  Evidently, there is a fourth wise man that no one knows about.  He wore a Burger King crown, an old gold colored choir robe with a blue sash, and carried a green glass vase as his gift to the baby in the hay.  And he knew every word to all of the songs, so we know quite well that he was in rehearsals.  Whew.

     All that to say, I've been doing my Ever Best to not overreact until I've gotten all of the facts.  Sometimes it happens, more often than not, it doesn't.  So I tried to just laugh off the conversation with Cricket this morning and continue on my merry way.  Have I mentioned that I'm also trying not to humiliate Rooster any more than necessary either?  No?  Didn't get that impression from previous posts?  Well I am.  Trying.

     Then my neighbor showed up at my house.  With Rooster.  Looks like he found him sprawled in the middle of the road, and he couldn't get around him with the car, so he got him up and brought him home.  What a good Samaritan!  I tried really hard not to think about the fact that he'd just come home in the car of a man that he didn't know, but I did, and we had to have a little talk.  But I didn't overreact.  Which is important for you to know.

     It was a mild sprain.  He'd tripped and fallen, it hurt, and he just wasn't getting up.  Even for the neighbor's car.  That's my boy.  He gets it from his mamma.

     On the advice of my brother, medical expert extraordinaire, I took him to the immdediate care clinic and got it x-rayed.  Sprained, not broken.  Splint, not crutches.  He was so disappointed.

     "You wanted it to be broken?  Why?"

      "I just wanted the wheelchair.  I like it."

     Oh, Rooster.  What am I going to do with you?

     More things he's saying:
     We were listening to the radio in the car and he found that Maroon 5 song about moving like Jagger (and I'm thinking, with a walker, maybe?).  He likes it.  I asked him if he or his friends even knew who "Jagger" is.  His reply, " That guy from that band."  What band?  "Mick Jagger and the Other Guys."

     He is obsessed with weather and stays glued to the Weather Channel.  Lately he randomly yells, "Irene, you old blowhard!"

     Sigh.  Smile.  That's my Rooster.



Photo courtesy of Julie Elliott-Abshire.