I’ll admit, I didn’t think she would make it. Neither did our 12-year-old daughter, Emma.
Sometimes my wife will say she can do something that contradicts most generally accepted theories of space-time continuums. Most the time my wife will be wrong.
My wife does not like to be late for things, which is unfortunate because my wife is always late for things. In an effort to disguise her lateness, my wife will take reality and distort it. My wife does this because — quite frankly — she is crazy.
Let’s say my wife is supposed to be in Joplin at 3 p.m. but doesn’t leave our home in Carthage until 2:55 p.m. As she pulls out of our driveway, my wife will call whoever she is supposed to meet at 3 p.m. and say “I will be there in five minutes,” which, again following generally accepted theories of space-time continuums, is clearly impossible.
What this does, as I have pointed out repeatedly, is make my wife late twice for the same appointment.
But sometimes my wife will surprise Emma and me.
On Thursday Emma’s middle school class was going on a field trip. Emma was excited about the field trip.
“Dad, I can’t be late for school Thursday because we’re going on our field trip,” Emma said. I told Emma that she had nothing to worry about.
Thursday morning, Emma came downstairs and saw a plastic bag filled with homemade muffins. My wife baked the muffins the night before. The muffins were to be served at a work-related breakfast meeting my wife was hosting that morning.
Emma doesn’t usually see homemade baked goods in our kitchen, so she did what any 12-year-old kid would do: She walked upstairs and politely asked if she might have one of the muffins.
Ha! Sometimes I kill myself. Nope, what Emma did was open the bag of muffins and eat most of them.
When my wife came down stairs and saw that Emma had eaten nearly all of the muffins, my wife smiled.
“Good morning dear. I’m ever so glad you enjoyed my homemade muffins,” my wife said.
Ha! I tell you, I kill myself.
Nope, what my wife actually did, when she saw that Emma had eaten most of the homemade muffins was to frown and say “HOLY #@%#$, EMMA, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? THOSE WERE FOR WORK! YOU’RE GROUNDED UNTIL YOU ARE 49!”
Then my wife announced that she was going to the large 24-hour to buy replacement muffins. She also announced she was going to pick up a disposable camera for Emma to take her school field trip.
“Don’t leave until I get back,” my wife said as she rushed out the door.
In order for Emma not to be late, she and I needed to leave our house 15 minutes from the time my wife rushed out the door. The large-24-hour retail store is at least five minutes from our house. That meant my wife had exactly five minutes to walk into the large 24-hour retail store and buy muffins and a disposable camera.
“She’ll never make it,” I told Emma.
Exactly 13.5 minutes later the phone rang.
“I’m four blocks away,” my wife said.
Exactly 1.25 minutes later my wife pulled into our driveway, handed Emma a disposable camera, backed out of our driveway and drove to her work-related meeting.
I’m pretty sure that somewhere Albert Einstein is scratching his head.
Address correspondence to Mike Pound, c/o The Joplin Globe, P.O. Box 7, Joplin, MO 64802, or via e-mail at mpound@joplinglobe.com.
