Returning to The Scene of the Crime

Tomorrow I'm taking the kids to the dentist again. Last Wednesday we went for their check-ups and all went incredibly smoothly. While waiting, we read to each other, we chatted amiably, we garnered smiles from the admiring staff and clientele with our lovely display of family harmony. Sophie went back on her own for the first time ever, and despite the staggered appointments all three were seen at the same time and I had kid-free time in the waiting room and got 2 days worth of studying done. It was lovely.

Well. For a while.

The kids all got done in short succession and I had my hands full again. Leo had to go to the bathroom (single-user room directly off the waiting room/desk area), and I was doing post-appointment paperwork at the desk when my Leo radar blipped uncontrollably. I tore myself away as soon as possible and opened the bathroom door to see Leo fishing paper towels out of the toilet with his hands. Not the soft fluffy paper towels so many have in their homes, but the industrial brown cardboard masquerading as paper so often found in institutional settings and other places who find it amusing to offer water-repellent "towels" to their bathroom users.

So I do disgusting damage control, and pee real quick while Leo is washing his hands. And his arms. I rush us out to the waiting room where I've left the girls, and catch Sophie in the act of trying to uproot the fake plant. Nearly all eyes are on us since the magazines are six years old, the chairs are uncomfortable, the piped in music sucks, and our flurry of activity is eye-catching and impossible to ignore. As I have my back to the room of waiting dental victims, untangling Sophie's tentacles from the poor plastic plant, I feel.... a breeze. I freeze. My hand snakes around to my posterior, reaching for skirt, praying for skirt, desperately clinging to the hope of skirt, and instead finds my hot pink undies and bare thighs above my knee-high alarmingly striped socks, my skirt having mischievously crawled into the back of my underwear after my preternaturally speedy pee.

Oh, crap.

I whip around, untuck my skirt, and immediately return to Sophie patrol and pack up our endless waiting-room entertainment supplies. I bustle everyone out to the car, and hope that none of the same people are there when we come back for our appointments next week. Tomorrow.

And you know what? I never once blushed or felt embarrassed. Amazing what motherhood can do, I tell ya.