When I was a child, I believed that you were an adult when a) you liked coffee and b) always had money on you. My mother had a faux leather blue wallet (the kind where the bills lay flat) which was never empty. I'm almost 44 years old and only pretend-like coffee to impress others and rarely have cash of any kind. I have paid for fast-food french fries with the spare change scrounged from the floor of my truck. Today, though, I hit a new low, thus establishing another rule for establishing adulthood status: an adult never runs out of toilet paper.
Also befitting my developmental age of approximately seven-years-old, I lack any applicable knowledge of the word "moderation" as I headed out today to see my 5th production of "Wicked" (Read about production number 4 here: http://amyafterthefact.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-wicked-evening.html). Despite my atrocious driving record, my abysmal sense of direction, and my van that smells like feet, I graciously volunteered to drive. In my most adult-like manner, I conducted a pre-inventory check before Savannah and I left the house.
"Savannah, do we have money for lunch," I asked.
"Mom, I always have money," Savannah said, having developed this habit at a young age as a defense mechanism after the zillionth time witnessing me beg the shopper in line behind me to cover our bill.
"Do you have the directions?"
"No."
"Do you have the GPS?"
"No."
"Savannah! I cannot mother you the rest of your life! You have to learn to be more responsible," I shouted as I stormed out the door.
"Mom, do you have the tickets," Savannah asked, plucking them off the calendar where I'd responsibly pinned them so I wouldn't lose or forget them, before following me out the door.
We picked up my friend Pat, who works as a library associate, and her artistic daughter Claire who came out dressed like a Russian princess so I charmingly called her "Anastasia" all day. Pat is a wonderful person with only one fatal flaw: she believes that she should be able to see through the front window-shield as we're driving. Let me be clear (even though the window-shield was not), we were never in danger. I could always see...it just created an atmosphere of mystery and suspense.
We engaged in mature and not-inappropriate-or-disturbing-at-all discussions for the ride up, arriving in plenty of time for a leisurely pre-show lunch. I had worn my dressy brown clogs to impress my fellow theater-goers but did not count on four inches of snow coating Buffalo City sidewalks as we trekked to the restaurant. I went into survival mode and shuffled along in the footsteps of Anastasia until a street-car clanged in the distance. "Look!" I cried, delighted, "Can we watch it?" We stood enchanted, as the snow slowly fell and the street car slowly approached, as though from another time, another era. Suddenly it stopped and we regarded one another, entranced until the streetcar driver impatiently waved us across the street so that the passengers could sit enchanted to watch us scurry across the way.
After I had enjoyed 1/2 of the delicious meal that I had ordered and 1/2 of the meal that I had forced Savannah to order, I excused myself to inspect the bathroom facilities (for blog purposes, of course). Now, as the actions that I am about to describe were not premeditated, I feel that I shouldn't be judged too harshly and, please remember that I had hit rock-bottom just that morning. After I finished my inspection, I noticed that, besides an ample roll of plush potty paper peering predominantly from the dispenser, there were, on the back of the potty, an additional set of three rolls. Like Goldilocks (who, by the way, committed a level four felony of her own), I considered my options. There was Papa Bear for ample coverage, Mama Bear had sacrificed much during her time of service while Baby Bear was small but still squeezable. I dismissed Papa Bear...it just seemed too greedy. Baby Bear was out as I didn't think he'd hold out past sunset. So it was that Mama Bear awkwardly accompanied me to, ironically enough, "Wicked."
Savannah, accustomed to my psychotic predilection for swiping spoons was mortified but not surprised by the sudden appearance of a roll of toilet paper in my lap during intermission. I'm afraid that my fellow commuters may have viewed me in a slightly different light after I confessed my larceny of latrine paper.
From my vantage point situated in the second-to-last row of the theater, I squinted at the stage, trying to make the fuzzy faces focus. Turns out the potty paper was a real blessing where we were in the nose-bleed section. I thought about it on the ride home, as Pat and I peered hopefully through the somewhat translucent windshield. Unless the ratio is equal parts milk, sugar and coffee, I don't like the beverage preferred by most mature adults. I rarely have money (I borrowed a dollar from Claire to cover my lunch bill). And to solve the problem of running out of toilet paper, I went out and stole some. It was a wickedly immature thing to do. When am I going to grow up?
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