A Short Story

Once upon a time it was yesterday, and Julian stayed home from school because he was a little sick and I didn't want it to get horribly worse.  He has this calendar that comes with stickers to decorate and whatnot and I saw that he had put a "sick day" sticker on yesterday's date the night before, with a question mark. Ha! I felt the exact same way. Will it be? Won't it? Having to wake him up for his early school is a bummer if I'm going to end up keeping him home anyway, so I just decided to make it official and let him sleep. Later when he asked why I hadn't come into his room to wake him and why it had been so light when he woke up, I explained that I had let him sleep in and he called me on my pre-meditated decision to keep him home. I always have to pretend to hem and haw about it because, as we all know, we can't let the kids win and give them any ideas, see.

Later in the day I took him to the store along with a jar full of his saved coins. The three of us had guessed how much there was. I guessed $9. Julian guessed $15 and Sean guessed $21.  Guess what, I suck at this game because the total was THIRTY-THREE DOLLARS.  Geez, man!  He was shocked and we took his voucher to the cashier to get his moolah. I was paying for my boring items and handed her the voucher, intending to have her cash it separately but she put it towards the cost of my stuff. "NO!" I basically shouted. "I want the cash!" She didn't understand and I had to explain it was his money.  Anyway, it messed up the whole system and it took forever and infinity to work out but I pressed it and the boy got his hard-earned cash money. 

We then ran in the zero-degree-with-a-windchill-of-buttfreeze  parking lot to the car that had apparently decided to die. Sean came to bail us out in that buttfrozen parking lot and fiddle with all of the car junk and plugs and hook-ups.  We all made it home and then he packed back up, declaring he was going to go to the appointment to meet with the insurance people now, had work still left to do, but would do it tonight. {straight mouth, straight eyes emoji}  And I told him, "Sean. Thank you for doing all the horrible things. YOU are the true meaning of Christmas" before I swooped my ice hands up his shirt and sent him yelping and flailing, and on his way.