Hot Lava!

I sat in the lobby with Brooklyn yesterday while I was waiting for the mechanic to look over my car and give me an estimate. I was content just sitting on my butt, alternately playing Words with Friends on my phone and glancing up at the freaks contestants on The Price is Right. Did you all know that Drew Carey is the host now? I had no idea. Although, I supposed Bob Barker has to be about a hundred years old, huh? 

 Anyway, I was fine just sitting there, playing with my phone and looking at the TV now and then. Brooklyn, on the other hand. . .

The repair shop had one of those Hinckley and Schmidt water coolers. You’d think they dispensed rum with the way my kids are addicted to these things. The minute my kids walk into a waiting room that features one of these coolers, they make a bee line toward it. They proceed to guzzle down water like a tribe of desert wanderers. It was my kids who taught me that a human’s stomach can expand to hold four and a half gallons of water. Of course, all this water has to go somewhere. Thus begins the bathroom fun.

Brooklyn’s little bathroom trip took approximately fifteen minutes. Two minutes to pee, wipe, and zip up, and thirteen minutes to play in the sink. Then she came out and headed right back to the water dispenser. But this time, there was an added twist. “I can only walk on the rug. I can’t touch the floor,” Brooklyn announced as she leapt from carpet runner to carpet runner, carefully avoiding the tiled area. 

“Why do you have to stay on the carpet, Brooklyn?” I inquired.

“Because,” she explained with the hint of an eye roll, “the floor is hot lava.” 

Ahhh, yes, hot lava. All kids know about the dangers of hot lava on the floor. I wonder why this is since most kids have never actually seen hot lava. But ask any child and they’ll tell you that you must stay on the carpet, or the green tiles, or the white squares, etc. to avoid falling into hot lava. Hot lava is universal. 

She carefully hopped back and forth to the water cooler, avoiding the hot lava, several times. Then she switched things up a bit. The hot lava became a lake with alligators and snakes. She had to leap onto her chair so an alligator wouldn’t take a bite out of her way-too-small shoes that she insisted still fit her. This game went on for a while until she decided she needed to run across the carpet runner maze. 

“Mom, mom, mom! Say 'ready, set, go!'", Brooklyn instructed as she crouched down, ready to sprint across the room. This was followed by, “Mom, time me! How fast am I?” I let her run around for a while, hoping the mechanics would get sick of seeing her bounce around the waiting room like a ping pong ball, and they’d quickly finish up my car. When that didn’t work, I tried to get her to sit down and play a game on my phone. When that didn’t work, I gave up and joined her. All I can say is, it’s a good thing the floor wasn’t really hot lava.