If anyone had tried to tell me twenty years ago that someday I would spend every waking hour of my life at the Y watching gymnastics, I would have doubled over laughing. I would probably have laughed so hard that I would have accidentally spilled my Michelob all over myself. And yet, that seems to be how things turned out.
For instance, today. Today was Practice Meet day, the precursor to the official meet season that gives all of the girls the chance to perform in front of official judges without the pressure. What's cool about Practice Meet is that you get to see all of the levels perform in a quite condensed amount of time. The Level 8s and 9s are pretty fun to watch. Plus, they get to pick their own floor music, so you don't go home in a trance from the incessant repetition of your own child's floor music, which is exactly the same song for every single girl in her level. (Speaking of which, here's how old I am: today I saw a 16-year-old girl perform to the techno-enhanced version of Europe's "The Final Countdown". Do you think she had any idea what that song was when she picked it? I think not.)
I knew the seating would be difficult today, so I stuck around for the whole warmup just to save my portion of cold, metal bleacher. A handful of parents made a similar decision, but many chose to arrive right at showtime. At the end of warmup, Third Grader flew out to me. "We have five minutes to get a snack! I'm STARVING." Being the good mother that I am, I made her save my seat and tore down the hallway to the vending machine. What does a good mother get her starving child to eat right before an athletic competition? Chips? Candy? No. Peanut butter crackers! Yes!
I weaved my way through the horde of arriving parents back to my child and began to tear open the cellophane when, behind me, I heard, "Ohh! Peanut butter!" Sitting on the top bleacher is a bird of a woman, fluttering her little bird hands in front of her face in horror at Third Grader's snack. Of course, you know who this woman is. Yes - it's my friend Jane Fonda. "I'm allergic to peanuts!" she said, still fluttering her little hands.
Now, I don't mean to make light of this affliction. I realize that this peanut allergy is a real and potentially dangerous thing. Nobody wants to asphyxiate, okay? But this woman was looking at me as if I had just whipped out a pack of Pall Malls and jammed one in my kid's mouth. So what did I do? Naturally, I hauled Third Grader into the bathroom so she could inhale a few crackers over the sink and then scrub the vile peanut residue from her skin. Isn't that what you would do? And what do you suppose became of my seat? The one that I had warmed for 90 minutes already while Jane Fonda snuck in at the last minute? Why, it was given away to Jane Fonda's parents, of course, who showed up while we were in the bathroom!
I don't think we're going to become friends anytime soon, JF and me.
Tomorrow we are taking a Y bus to Boston with the whole team to see the Olympic Gymnastics Superstars Tour. It should be a lot of fun - the tornadoes are really looking forward to it. I'm not sure if JF is actually going, but I should probably pass on that peanut butter bath I was planning to take tonight - just in case. With my luck there will be assigned seating and I will get stuck with her.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Maybe I don't understand peanut allergies, but how does it affect JF if your kid eats peanut butter crackers from several rows away? It's not as if you were spraying Peanut Oil Pam in the air and Third Grader was trying to catch it in her mouth.
It's her allergy, she should hev moved. I've never heard of asphyiation from second hand peanuts butter crackers!
She is a piece of work. I am not a fan.
You are so much nicer than me. Id make sure that I was armed with everything peanut for the next function..maybe even wear Mr. Peanut paraphernalia to add to the effect...and make sure if she starts heading toward you point and say "sorry..this area is infected with peanuts you'll have to sit elsewhere.."
Geesh..has she ever heard of manners?
Post a Comment