tossing my cookies

Monday's are my day to pick up my daughter, my son and another little boy from school. After I pick them up I take my daughter to basketball practice which is fifteen minutes from school and fifteen to twenty minutes from home. My son and the other little boy sit in the back seat and play very well together, but they're loud. Like little shrieking hyenas. They come up with little games to keep them occupied, but all the games incorporate loud shrieking and most always farting noises.

I decided to get smart so, I grabbed a bunch of leftover suckers from our Halloween stash. My thought was to let the boys eat suckers in an attempt to keep their little pie holes quiet during the long trip home. I also grabbed a bag of tortilla chips and dried cherries for myself.

I was happily enjoying my snack on my way to school. I didn't have anyone in the car to share with, which is rare, so I had the bag of tortilla chips between my legs and the bag of dried cherries on the passenger seat and I alternated between both bags happy to satiate my need for salt and sweet. Then I caught a glimpse of an old man in the lane next to me, as his car passed I could clearly see a giant wad of white gauze stuck in his left nostril. Hmm, that's not really something I want to see when I'm enjoying a snack.

I overcame my thoughts of boogers, clotting nose blood and nose hair and continued on down the road still grabbing handfuls of chips, but slowing down on the cherries, because now I was very aware of the texture of the soft slimy fruit in my mouth. I was sitting at a stoplight when a man pulled in front of me in the next lane. I was looking at his small Ford Festiva wondering if it had seats in the back when he abrupty opened his driver's side door and puked on the road. He paused a moment and let some mucus drain out of his nose then shut his door and promptly blew his nose. Oh, dear. I was paralyzed with a hand full of chips half way to my already full mouth. I slowly put the chips back in the bag, forced myself to swallow what was now a mouth full of warm, wet, corn mush and decided I wasn't very hungry and might not be for several days.

When I finally arrived at school the grotesque sights I had witnessed were starting to fade so I handed out suckers and let my daughter finish off the corn chips. The suckers worked quite well, although the boys couldn't stop whacking each other with their backpacks, at least they weren't making any sound effects to accompany their actions.

I dropped my daughter off at practice and headed home. The drive was peaceful especially since I continued to pass suckers back to the boys. The van now smelled like sweet cherries and I decided I would help myself to a sucker when I witnessed the man driving the truck in front of me pull over into the turn lane quickly open his door and spit out the contents of whatever he had in his mouth. Okay. No sucker for me. Man, talk about an excellent way to control your appetite.