This afternoon, I picked the Sondog up from school. He was waiting at the front door of his classroom with his Pre-K for Obama sign across his shoulder, ready and anxious to get outta there! I dropped off some paperwork at his school and we wandered down the avenue to my office. Folks were honking their horns and waving at him. He takes it all like it’s normal, what he does.

Since I’m such a rockstar, I’ve got a TV in my office. The Kid watched PBS while I wended my way through a morass of office crises.

I can remember when I was a child, listening to the radio late at night or very early in the morning, waiting for WPGC to broadcast Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the station would sometimes do a test of the Emergency Broadcasting System. Even in my mind, I think of it as capitalized. I never heard the system ever announce a true emergency. It was always and ever, only a test.

Today, though, Arthur was interrupted by that familiar, annoying, attention-getting static buzz. Followed by a message. My child was curious, but not worried. He doesn’t know what he’s growing up in, yet, though we talk a lot about war. I was a child of the Cold War, nuclear exchange, AIDS, fear. My child listened with interest to the announcement about severe thunderstorms with winds up to 70 mph, and went back to his cartoons.

We walked home in the changing weather, secure in the knowledge that the storm was still a state away. We ran into neighbors we know, dogs we pat, stones we kick. We speculated with a macabre sort of glee on what kind of havoc a falling tree would wreak on this car and that, and wandered into the neighborhood video store and bike shop to return our Kung Fu movie from Sunday. We wandered blithely through the shop of bike-tire-tugging men in spandex, past the cases full of chains and gear, along the line of action movies on the wall, to greet Charles, the proprietor. As we came alongside his counter, I noticed with dawning amusement and horror that the men were acting weird. Charles quietly pulled a bit of plastic bag over a video on the counter, while another man unpacking boxes suddenly spun around like his pants were on fire and began to throw things back into the box.

Apparently, they had gotten a shipment of another sort of movie in and were in the midst of unpacking them when we strolled right in.

“Um, it’s ok, Charles. We’re just here to return a movie. We’re not looking to rent another one right now.” Charles took the movie without a word and I spun my kid around and out the door, trying desperately not to laugh out loud.

I’d forgotten the store has one of those ‘back rooms’. The kid didn’t see anything. Heck. I didn’t see anything. But perhaps I’ll go to my neighborhood bike shop and video store without the King of Everything for a while. I sure don’t want to have to explain any of that stuff to him. I’m not sure I could.

What’s your funny single mom moment?

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