Mom Time

This story gives Darla and I a headache

Nowaday, I lose everything.  My card isn't an exception.  This is why I made sure to have cash on hand in order to pay for the Mommy and Me movie (Super 8) that I had plan on going to with my new mom friend.  I left it in the car so I would know where it was when I left the next morning. 

Darla was strapped in her seat and calm.  We were ready to roll.  I looked down in the cupholder to make certain the cash was there. 

It was gone.

I tore the car apart.  Sweat rolled down my temples.  I knew I only had a finite amount of time before Darla grew frustrated and started to scream.  I threw all the dry cleaning on the floor.  I knocked plastic cups out of their holders. I threw paper everywhere.  I even checked the glove compartment (clearly, the most unlikely place because it's the most logical spot to put cash). 

I called Greg, not knowing what else to do.

"I took out money so I would have cash today and I can't find it anywhere," I said.

"Ohhhhhh...Was it a few bills?" He asked.

"You didn't," I said.

"I thought it was a bad idea to leave cash sitting out like that, so I picked it up on my way to work," He said.

"I have no money!" I said.

"Sorry," he said. 

This was when Darla started to cry and I realized I was going to be over 20 minutes late meeting my new friend, whose cell phone number I didn't have because we'd only ever emailed each other.  I remembered the humongous bag of change that sat on the floor of my car.  I was just going to have to bite the bullet and use those.

I raced over to the the theater, reaching into the backseat every few seconds to shove the pacifier back in Darla's screaming mouth.  I, panic stricken, rolled her stroller into the theater and apologized profusely to my friend.

"One please," I said to the person selling the tickets.

"That's $10.50," she said.

"I'm so sorry about what I have to do, " I said as I started counting out stacks of four.  "One, two, three, four....Crap, I don't know if I have enough...five, six, six seventy five, seven, eight twenty five, nine...How much was it?...ten, ten fifty."

Mortified and ashamed, I collected my ticket.

"I'm so sorry," I said to my new friend.

She waved her hand as if to say get over it, but I couldn't.

We watched the movie and, after, she bowed out of lunch (which I would've had to pay for in quarters anyway).  She claimed she had a stomach ache.

I knew better and worried the whole way home that I had lost a potential friend.  I decided to write her an email in which I lied and said: I am usually far more put together.

She replied back that in Fiji everyone is late and they have something called Fiji Time.   We're on Mommy Time, she reasoned.  She then moved on to tell me that Ian Ziering (Steve from 90210) was the celebrity actor the woman in our mom group was referring to as being her husband.

I told her I had figured that out through a one handed google search within an hour of leaving the Mommy and Me group. 

My flakiness from that morning wasn't acknowledged any further.  All was right with the world.