How Today Could Have Been Worse

This was one of those days in which I question myself. Why am I doing this? Why did I find the idea of childlessness so repugnant? Where did I go wrong? How can I get out of my contract? Who are these people living in my house and how can I evict them? What was I thinking when we adopted twin baby boys who would grow up to be twin twelve-year olds?

So, in the aftermath of such a day, I reassure myself with the idea that things could always have been worse. For instance:

1) We could have adopted triplets or quadruplets.

2) It could have been Monday.

3) I might have fallen in the shower and broken my femur in three places before breakfast.

4) The snow could have been toxic, contaminated by an undiscovered, yet lethal acid-rain type of chemical.

5) I might have punched my Reluctant Student in the head and then stabbed myself in the neck and called 9-1-1 and be spending the night in the local county jail.

6) My house could have caught on fire and all my precious scrapbooks and unscrapbooked pictures might have burned in a fiery inferno and thus, my proof that we are Happy would be gone.

7) We could have all awoken covered in chigger bites.

8) A meteor could have fallen from the sky and crashed through my family room roof and killed all three cats and also crushed my collection of Spode Christmas Tree china.

9) The washing machine and the unflushed toilet could have overflowed at the same time.

10) Twelve-year olds could possibly stay twelve forever and their body odor would never abate.

See? Things all look cheerier when you line them up against more dire possibilities.

(My twelve-year old boys spent Monday and Tuesday dillydallying and lollygagging and frittering away their time. One of them read two novels this week, which is good, but the other one managed to look busy while not actually producing any work. I said, "Fine, but you will have to have everything completed on Friday." And then I left them to their own devices, trusting that consequences would teach them the lesson they need to know.

And then we woke up to a Snow Day. Public school was cancelled and I magnanimously declared that they didn't need to do Friday's scheduled work, but that all the previous days' work needed to be completed. That left Reluctant Student with about three history lessons, three math lessons, three literature lessons, a spelling test, an assessment to correct and a partridge in a pear tree. His brother had lessons, too, but not too many and he worked diligently until his work was done.

Reluctant Student shouted, screamed, stomped, cried, flung himself to the ground (and I didn't have the forethought to fling myself next to him, but I will next time), feigned a nap, slammed his hand into a filing cabinet and expressed his annoyance with me in other loud and irritating ways. He worked (half-heartedly, with a bad attitude) until nearly 6 p.m.

As I said, things could always be worse. I could have slipped in the snow and knocked out my front teeth or I could have accidentally thrown a book hard in the direction of my son's head and broken a mirror and ended up with seven years of hard labor in a rock quarry.)

Cheer up! Things could always be worse, he said. And then things got worse.