When I Nearly Crashed The Car

On the way to his martial arts class, the boy was eating a snack. One of those crackers and cheese combo packages. The elastics for his braces were sitting on the center console of the car. He finished his snack about half-way to our destination.

The elastics were in a bad spot for me- no where to put my elbow. So when he finished I just reminded him about them so he’d put them back in. Since the car was still moving, I figured if he started then he’d have them in by the time we got to the school, what with the movement of the car and all.

So he picks up the first one and puts it in. And then the boy who spent a week in tears of frustration over his elastics; the boy who on a number of occasions declared he would not go to school because of the elastics; the boy who had declared he would never wear the elastics because they were too hard to install said something so remarkable and stunning that I still can’t believe the words issued forth from his mouth.

“Putting in my elastics is SO EASY!”

Once I remembered I was still operating a motor vehicle, all I could do was smile and shake my head.