You know all those horror stories you hear about children falling out their upstairs bedroom window? Yeah, well, we fortunately didn’t have that happen to us, but by some freak accident that seems to only happen in our household, we DID somehow manage to puncture our screen and launch it about 500 feet away from our house instead.
It was about 8pm and we had just finished our bath (we do things late around here). There was a clap of thunder and a shot of lightning across the backyard, so B ran to see what was going on. Despite the dozens of times I told her to stay away from the upstairs window, she of course went right up to it and struck up a conversation with the clouds.
“Hi, clouds! What are you doing up there? Did you eat too much dinner? Are you doing hoppa-doo in your sink to feel better?”
Almost as if they were responding, the clouds let out another massive clap of thunder and another strike of lightning, which sent my daughter squealing with glee that they were “paying attention.”
Unfortunately, her excitement manifested itself in a massive fist punch right into the screen, Braveheart-style. In half a second, the entire screen popped out of its casing and ricocheted about 50 feet in the air, flipping wildly in the storm and eventually landing about 500 feet on the grass in front of our house.
It was at that point that B let out a bloodcurdling scream. Absolutely convinced that she had lost an arm or something worse, both my husband and I inspected every part of her body, only to find (thankfully) nothing.
After at least five minutes of trying to calm her down and asking every possible question under the sun to determine what was the reason for this hysteria, it finally dawned on me to ask, “Do you feel bad about the screen falling down?”
“YEEESSSSSSSSS!!!!” she wailed, becoming completely frenetic again.
My husband managed to keep a straight face and, as is his style, continued cradling her in his arms and telling her everything was OK. I, on the other hand, completely unable to control myself, started laughing hysterically. As I was laughing, I kept saying to myself, “Stop it! You’re going to make her feel bad!!! You’re a horrible person!!!” but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t stop.
By some miracle of the universe – or maybe just sheer confusion at why her mother (who rarely even smiles anymore) was actually appearing to be even somewhat jovial, if only for a moment – B finally looked at me and just stopped her crying. Then, she even cracked a smile of her own. And THEN, just moments later, began to actually laugh HERSELF!
So yes, maybe that wasn’t the greatest of parenting responses that I’ve ever had (that’s been happening a lot, hasn’t it?), but at least we stopped our screaming. And when my husband came back inside with the screen in tow, my poor daughter ran and hugged the filthy thing because she was so happy to see it again.
Parenting can have its moments.