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Slugfest

17.May.2005

My son came in just now from taking the dog for a walk. I’m fairly certain that the dog took the kid for a walk, but I’m not going to make him feel less useful simply because the dog outweighs him, by about thirty pounds.

He walks into my room (the son) and sits on the bed to talk to me as I am writing on the computer. I have no memory of the conversation up to the point where I hear, “EW! What’s in my hair? EWWW! IT’S A SLUG!”

The next thing I see is my son batting something out of his hair and then getting up to leave.

“STOP!” I say in The Voice.

He stopped. Sometimes The Voice works, and sometimes it doesn’t. I think it all depends on whether or not Mars is in alignment with Jupiter and the child can’t get past me to get away before I catch them. I was between him and the door. He was stuck.

“A SLUG? YOU FLICKED A SLUG INTO MY ROOM AND NOW YOU’RE LEAVING?”

He was looking at me as if I were daft. “It was just a little slug Mom!”

Oh, well then. That makes it all right. The established rule for letting a slug stay in my room is that it must be less than two inches in length and, oh yeah, FAKE!

This one was disturbingly real and now residing somewhere in the box of socks and clothes on the floor by my bed.

I tell him, again using The Voice, to find that slug and find him NOW.

After a few minutes of rooting around and saying he can’t find it and it was little and it probably wouldn’t hurt me, he got up with an old envelope in his hand. “Got it”, he said as he tried to get past me.

“NOT so fast bubba. Let me see it” He tossed the envelope down and said, “OH ALL RIGHT”

There was, of course, no slimy slug on the envelope. He said he’d found it, and was trying to get out of my room by pretending to cart the thing away, when in fact he hadn’t even located it yet. I fear he was learning too much from our politicians. “Uh, yeah. Here they are, WMD. Right here. We’re, uh, just gonna blow them up so they don’t hurt anybody. Yep. All gone now.”

I was not a happy Mommy at that point.

“Find it Mr., I don’t want to step on a slug in my bare feet in my own house in the middle of the night! AND how on earth did you get a slug in your HAIR?”

As he lifted clothing and socks to look for Mr. Slug, he told me that he’d taken the dog through the park and some of the trees and bushes had brushed by his head.

“It must have fallen into my hair Mom”

Oh great, now we have tree dwelling slugs. That’s all we need.

Finally, after several minutes of digging, success! The interloper was discovered hiding under a teddy bear and some mismatched socks.

“I can’t pick it up Mom! It’s disgusting!”

He had a point there. However, I used The Voice again and he knew that the use of The Voice for the third time in a row was akin to the third rider of the apocalypse arriving at his door, so he stopped whining and just picked it up.

“Can I keep it Mom? Can I?

How a child can go from ‘it’s disgusting’ to ‘can I keep it’ in under 2.4 seconds is beyond me.

He knew the answer to that one as soon as he saw The Face. It’s right up there with The Voice, and when the two are combined, it doesn’t matter if Jupiter is sliding into Mars, the kid ain’t makin’ it out alive.

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editor's note: due to stoopid people who can't behave in public (ie, spammers) we have had to turn off the comment feature on our older columns. We'll try waiting a while and then turning it back on to see if they get bored and go away. In the mean time, we will manually add any REAL comments if you email them to us. The link is below.


That was too good and glad that you are not getting bored with life... Keep that voice and look, both are really important if you don't lock them up when they turn thirteen. Keep up the good work and Mothering.... Love Ya Trudy
Trudy Starr
Seattle, WA USA -
SLUGS!! HOW GROSS !!! The Voice! HOW FUNNY The Face!! HOW FUNNY Indeed!! You are amazing, Pam! Keep these coming 'cause there are days I really need a laugh and I can always count on you to provide me with one!! Hugs Lee
Lee Ambrose
FL USA -
"How a child can go from ‘it’s disgusting’ to ‘can I keep it’ in under 2.4 seconds is beyond me." ROFL!! Oh my goodness, what a gooey, slimy misadventure! :::shudders:::
duckgirl
San Jose, CA USA -
c'mon, what's a slug but a cute little snail who has lost his shell?
allison
UT USA -
The Voice combined with the use of my middle name made me always run for cover........ I usually never made it.
Graz
Ypsilanti, Mi USA -
oh yeah. great work. let's stage a militia type raid on a publisher's office and camp out on his desk until he publishes up.
the agent
agentville, nc USA -
It's not so much The FACE and THE VOICE but THE EYES. We men are born with puppy dog eyes which we can turn on at any given moment. Wife: Why does my deodorant look like it has grown a Shetland Sheep dog on the end? Me: (senses trouble via secret X 41 male trouble sensors strategically placed all over our bodies) Honey pumpkin, Cinnamon (our horse) smelled really icky and I knew that (Turns on THE EYES) you were coming out to see him today and I thought you'd like the smell. Wife: (trying valiantly to remain mad) Why didn't you tell me before I got all that hair stuck in my armpits? Me: I thought for sure you'd want a lock of his hair for the scrapbook (THE EYES BLAZE with the innocent puppy-like quality that no mere woman can resist. And people wonder why I've been able to go naked Jell-o slip N' Sliding on my antique wet bannana for 33 years and not be paying alimony...
Carsoni Marconi Baloney
frog bottom, NC USA -
OMG Pam!! That is just too funny!!!!!! So....did you let him keep it? HEH
Margie
Massena, NY USA -
When I worked at my school down in Kent, one of my co-workers had The Voice! I was always a little envious because it often worked and I couldn't do it. I think you need to have kids to unlock The Voice upgrade...
Jeri Lynn
Shoreline, WA USA -

Scripts modified from Matt Wright's guestbook. His scripts can be found at Matt's Script Archive

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