You’re a solo parent tonight (wife on call, nanny/grandma out of town), and that always means shit is crazy. And before your work day is really over, you race to pick up two kids from two different schools in two different parts of town, who get out within fifteen minutes of each other. Then you race back home to get homework done in the only time it can happen. Then you pile them back into the car and drive to fetch a crappy takeout dinner, then to pick up the other two kids from drama practice, and then take all of them to your daughter’s gymnastics practice. And while one kid tumbles, two others do their homework in the car, and a third crawls all over you while you try to return emails on your phone.
When you finally get home you find that the dog, who normally would have been walked during the time you were out, has crapped on the floor. You instruct your son to clean it up. He does so, but instead of dropping the dog crap into the toilet, he distractedly drops it down the laundry chute. (?!?) You come upon him seconds later, as he is realizing his error, and see him frozen in place, turd no longer in hand, utterly baffled as to what he should do next. You bark several staccato sentences, all of which feature carefully chosen verbs in the imperative tense. But at that very moment, your oldest daughter is rifling through the laundry downstairs in search of sports bras to wash for tomorrow, and she experiences a close encounter of the worst kind.
All Hell breaks loose.
Twenty minutes later, the (literal) shitstorm is over, and the shrieking and sobbing have subsided, and the imminent danger of fratricide may also be passing. And while you’re down here, you might as well pack lunches. (And why the Hell did you give your mom the week off?) Bedtime is fast approaching, so you’re all business. And you lay out eight pieces of bread, so you can spread mayo with assembly line efficiency. And it’s while you’re applying lunch meat that your youngest strolls into the kitchen and addresses you with a “hey man”. Not “Dad” or “Daddy”, but “man”, as if you’re the parking lot attendant or maybe a dude handing out flyers.
And he’s hovering nearby, and he clearly wants something, and you’re like “Can’t you see I’m busy? What? What is it? What do you want?!”
And he’s like “Chill dude. I was just gonna ask you if you had a sandwich I could borrow.”
And somehow, this is exactly what you needed to hear. And you’re utterly disarmed, and laugh in spite of yourself, and now you’re making five sandwiches.
And he owes you a sandwich. And you can’t wait to collect, fifty years from today. And you will request an abomination of Wonderbread and Miracle Whip and Oscar Meyer bologna, just like you ate back in the 70s before we knew that shit will kill you. But 92 year-old Mike won’t give an F, because he will have lived a life full of magic days like this one.