This is NOT How We Should Roll

by Cathy

"I gotta run," said Joe hurriedly as he crutched his way towards our front door, dressed and ready to go for his client meeting.

"Wait!" I stopped him short. "Are you picking them up and driving them to the coffee shop like you planned?" I reconfirmed, my eyes darting around the room as I thought this through.


"Yeah, that's the plan," said Joe mindlessly as he gathered his portfolios and laptop.

"In OUR car?"

"Yeah."
"Hold on," I said quickly running to get my jacket but didn't bother with my shoes. "I'm coming downstairs with you."
"Why?"
"Where are they gonna sit, in the kids' car seats? You're on crutches, you can't move anything."
"Oh yeah. Thanks."

My intention was to just move the car seats out of the back seat and stuff them in the trunk.
Then I saw this:

Backseat, Crapseat

Holy mother of messes. What's more, when I lifted up those car seats? I found Goldfish crackers, hair ties, more bunched up Kleenex, a tube of Chapstick, a winter glove, stickers stuck to the seat and a crumbs in every sunken leather seam.

Once, my cousin, who is religious about the upkeep of cars and runs a car wash to prove it, flat out told me: "Dayum. I can't believe you roll your ride like that. You have a nice car. You should take better care of it." Those words were ricocheting around in my brain as I nearly donned a hazmat suit to clean out the car. 'I can't believe it, either' I grumbled to myself.

"Jesus," Joe chimed in, gawking at the mess. "What the heck do these girls do back here?"

"Well, we're not any better," I retorted. "Did you see the passenger side?"
 Behold:

Front passenger seat

"That's all your junk," he quickly answered.
"Yeah I mostly drive the car, but that's NOT all my stuff," I said looking at what's made its way from the back to the front. The front passenger side floor seemed to be a catch basin for what doesn't fit in the back seat.

There we were, in front of our building out in the street instead of the private confines of our garage, where we normally park the car. All four doors and the trunk were sprung wide open, exposing our mess, much to the chagrin of our neighbors and passersby. There we were in all our glory: Joe standing on his one leg and crutches watching me diving into the back seat and with my stocking feet, shuffling and shoving what I could back and forth from the car into the trunk, which didn't look any better, by the way:

And lest we forget the trunk. Yes, that's an air cast.

I miraculously found space to shove the car seats in the trunk and almost had to sit on the trunk lid to lock it closed. "There!" I said triumphantly to Joe, who was already sitting in the driver's seat.

"Wait! One more thing!" I ran around the back of the car. I reached for the cylinder of wet wipes I kept in the back pocket of the passenger seat, snapped out a few and wiped the seats clean of crumbs and sticky substances.

"Now you're ready to roll this baby the way it should be," I said.
"Until tomorrow after school," he joked as he drove away.
Indeed.