I thought I would tell you a story from my childhood entitled "Old McDonald had Cable TV"
It was Summer time. I was young- maybe 7 or 8 or 9 or 10. We were out of school for three glorious months that seemed like they would never end. Remember how slow time felt when you were little?
I miss that.
....
My Dad was working because he wasn't a teacher and didn't have the summers off. His hours were the typical Monday thru Friday 5 am to 8 pm.... yeah not very typical right? Basically we only ever saw him on the weekends, and late at night when he came home tired and his only missions were to eat his plate of food from the microwave and fall asleep.
Imagine my sheer delight when I THINK I see him in the bedroom at around ohhh....2 pm during the week.
Yes, time moved slowly as a child. But in this particular moment, I felt like time nearly stood still. Everything from the second I started running to the moment I realized what I had done felt like extreme slow motion. That might be why I can recall this particular event in such vivid detail- or maybe it is just the humiliation of the whole ordeal tattooed on my brain.
My mom was a stay-at-homer/dog groomer and must have been in her shop during this time, wherever she was, she wasn't where I had been otherwise she would have stopped me before I embarrassed myself for the next twenty years....and counting.
Well...okay... I am sure you want to know what I did, right?
Here it goes...
I had walked out of my room in a bored funk and was looking for my Mom. "MOM? MOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMM?" I didn't look very hard, I swear. I probably was about to ask for a sandwich, or for her to reach the giant tin of cookies she kept in the tallest cabinet so we couldn't get to it. Parents, let me just give you a quick short word of advice. If you want to put something as desirable to a child as cookies somewhere where they can't get to it, like some place high... make sure they never see you access them. Because once you leave, they will turn into cliff hanger and will utilize everything in their presence to create a stack just high enough to reach that glorious cookie jar. Dangerous, right? It would be pretty tragic happening upon your child covered in chocolate chips and blood.
Back to the story...
My parent's bedroom was at the very end of a loooonnnnnggggg hall. I stood at the end and stared down into the room looking for Mom. This is when I spotted my dad slouched down on the ground by the bed reaching for something underneath it. WHAT THE HECK WAS DAD DOING HOME? HOW COOL, RIGHT?
Don't ask me why but it must have been the excitement of seeing my Dad during regular business hours- I started scream singing OLD MCDONALD HAD A FARM at the top of my lungs while at a high rate of speed I skipped down the long hall towards him (yes, skipped, like skip-to-the-loo mah darlin!) Right before I reached him as he was still fiddling with something under the bed, I leaped high into the air and landed like a spider monkey on his back and yelled in my highest of high pitched and happiest voices ever "DADDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!"
This is when it happened...
A very scared asian man turned his head to look at me and yelled something probably similar to this "什麼他媽的你做的小女孩？" This was not my dad. Not even close. Because this guy was a cable man. And my dad worked at a power plant. And my dad isn't asian. And my dad wasn't this guy.
Imagine my face. I am right now, and I am laughing. I probably would have looked no different had I jumped onto the back of a zombie from Walking Dead.
I spent the next couple of hours locked in my closet, sitting on a pile of Helina's shoes, waiting patiently for the floor to open and swallow me up.
Lesson learned.
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