The String Cheese Incident

One day Matt went to pick the children up from school. I explicitly told him to bring cheese. He scoffed. "Don't need it," he told me. "I'm just going to drive, park near school and get them right in the car. They can have a snack at home." You have to let some people make their own mistakes, or they'll never learn. Before I recount for you the story that has become known as The String Cheese Incident (hereinafter The Incident), let me provide a little background information.

1) We live a few blocks from school.

2) It's very difficult to park near school in our high density urban neighborhood during drop off or pick up hours. Which is not usually a problem because #1. On the days I am forced to drive it rarely soothes the children to hear that we are just hopping in the car, as they know the car is likely to be parked further away from school than our house.

3) Matt thinks I enjoy hanging around a school playground for half an hour every afternoon even though I've explained many times that it is absolutely impossible to rush these kids anywhere (ANYWHERE) at 3:00 pm. Impossible. Nothing you do or say makes a bit of difference. Except for the cheese. Try to rush them and they will throw themselves on the ground screaming that you are the worst person on earth. Alex begins to punctuate his sentences with obscenities ("I said I want some food, bitch!") Charlotte's voice escalates until it reaches Sonic Scream. That's with cheese.

One time I arrived without food and when Charlotte demanded to know "what food do you have for me?" I tried throwing my arms wide, smiling and telling her in my sweetest voice "I don't have any food, but I have love!" Her response was the stuff of nightmares. She fixed me with a pointed stare. "I don't want love. I want food." This she declared in an eerie, controlled sort of voice. She then repeated at increasing volume the word "food" some 18,791 times. I literally had to sling her under my arm lengthwise and carry her, kicking and screaming "FOOD" out of the school, while hoping desperately that the other two would follow.



Jude's need for cheese manifests in a quiet, glowering, Overlook Hotel sort of way. Smart enough to know he cannot compete with this cacophony, most likely. But I digress.



I don't remember where I was when I got the text, probably the dentist's office, or other locale equally more enjoyable than the elementary school pick-up yard. The bittersweet feeling is one I won't soon forget. Though I am often right, this fact is rarely acknowledged. Sadly, my satisfaction was diminished by the fairly substantial expense. The way I understand it, Matt attempted to rush the children out of the schoolyard and into his waiting car. (How he managed to find a parking spot, I'll never know but kudos to him on that count at least.) I assume that after the horror show began he managed to wrestle them into his automobile without sustaining injury or triggering a CPS call, but the details are unclear as he cannot yet talk about that part of The Incident. During the short drive to our house the screaming and cursing was almost certainly deafening. 

It was right in front of our house that my husband's lack of perspicacity took a disastrous turn. His mistaken belief that proximity to the house would end the reign of terror led him to shift his attention from the children just long enough to exit the car and walk around to the passenger side. In that moment Jude and Charlotte escaped from the car and began to taunt their sibling from the sidewalk. Alex is a lovely, albeit mercurial child. Without the cheese, he becomes tragically destructive. It isn't his fault. When hangry, he has little control or awareness of his actions, and nobody regrets the consequences more tearfully than he.


I basked in the first sentence of the text for a few moments before the second fully hit me. "the next time i minimize the difficulty of your job, remind me of this day. alex kicked my car window out."  In a fit of cheese deficient insanity, Alex had repeatedly kicked the window which separated him from his tormenting siblings with both feet until it shattered in their faces. Though the scratches were superficial, the memory runs deep; the Incident held valuable lessons for even the smallest of us. As Matt removed his belongings from the car, a sympathetic neighbor lamented the rise in smash and grab auto thefts in the neighborhood and offered his help. "Oh, I wasn't robbed," Matt explained. "My 6 year old kicked out my window having a tantrum." With a distasteful look, the neighbor told him "you need to clean that up," before retreating into the safety of his children-of-the-corn-free home.