« Outtakes from the running argument | Home | If you’re seeing this… »
Calling Dr. Freud on the hotline, please
By Betsy Richter | 6:25 pmMy fourth grade daughter is a, well – she’s a high-strung child. Her pseudonym here (Drama Mama) fits her to a T, even while she wails and gnashes her teeth and stamps her feet re. same.
That makes every afternoon such an incredible treat when I head over to pick her up from aftercare at school. Will I be retrieving Jekyll, Hyde, or PrincessSummerFallWinterSpring? Will she be sparkly, sunny, or a beast from down below?
Weeeeeellll, apparently, today was a banner day for her – a banner day if you’re counting the many ways she had The Worst Day EVVV-er, that is.
And she definitely, absolutely, positively was counting them – she started listing them off one by one as I drove home. When she started? There were five listable offenses:
- My teacher yelled at me for something I didn’t do!
- I had to play foursquare at recess because my friend was on lunch duty
- The first graders didn’t exactly want me to play foursquare with them
- Well….gum butt…
At this point, I oh-so-sympathetically and genteely, well – I lost it. Gum butt? Gum butt? It’s apparently what you get when you sit on a chair that someone left gum on. And even though someone helps you pull most of it off your patterned cotton skirt and then puts masking tape over it – well, you’re still left with gum butt.
I tried to muffle the hysterical laughter – I refused to catch her eye in the rear view mirror, clapped one hand over my mouth, and did my best to think of something serious and sober. No dice. And to make matters worse, I got busted.
“Moooooom! Are you laughing at meeeeeeeeEEEE??? Make that six bad things that happened to me today!”
By the time we got home, the list was up to eight heinous offenses – but I’m sorry. Am I the only one who can’t help but chuckle at the phrase ‘gum butt?’
And to make matters worse – when she exited the car in a most dramatic way, she spun back around and flung this final command at me: “You had BETTER NOT blog any of this, Mom…I do NOT want people knowing that I had gum butt today!”
Guess I’d better start socking away every extra penny into that ‘do not pass go, head straight for psychotherapy due to severe parentally-induced trauma’ future therapy fund, no?
But I still believe even the good Doctor himself would have smirked a bit at ‘gum butt’…
Topics: Boss Lady | 5 Comments »
October 9th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
Actually I have a pair of shorts I once wore that got gum butt. It’s all gone now, but they have been demoted to “lawn mowing clothes” and are officially called “my gum butt shorts”. It is still a hilarious phrase. A sad happening to be sure, but a super funny thing to say.
October 10th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
Gum butt. Chortle! That is hilarious!
October 12th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Gum Butt is hilarious. And i have a 4th grade bean counter of the Diva persuasion as well, so believe me, I feel your pain.
October 13th, 2007 at 9:42 am
Well, for such a bad day, she deserves a little sympatico, no?
November 8th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Gum Butt? GUM BUTT! I would have lost it. Gum butt. I can’t even stop laughing now.