I live in a house with two males: one tall, one short. This means that I spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning pee off of the toilet. “Pee up high, pee down low. Pee on the rim, pee in the bowl.” (Dr Seuss: The Lost Years). Doing all of this pee-wiping gives me time to think; unfortunately, what I usually end up thinking about is how much I hate wiping up pee, and whether or not doing so is actually the worst job in the entire world. During my most recent clean-up, I had almost decided that, yes, it was (how do they get it behind the toilet?), when suddenly I remembered something that happened last Fall, and I realized, happily, that cleaning up pee isn’t the worst job in the world–working at Peter Piper Pizza is. Or rather–working at any Peter Piper Pizza near my kids, is.
I don’t know how I could have forgotten this fact, especially since the last time we went to Peter Piper Pizza was such a memorable experience that I am surprised even my inverted “cleaning pee off of the back underside of the toilet” position (known in yoga as “Downward Facing Mom”) would allow it to slip my mind for one single minute.
Somehow, it seems, it came to pass that, through the unhappy confluence of a prearranged sleepover and an unexpected accident, I ended up being the sole “responsible” adult in charge of five children at Peter Piper Pizza. (I know: those of you with five or more children of your own will scoff at this, but remember that you have the advantage of having had your children one by one; like the Athenian youth who practiced lifting a growing calf each day until, eventually, he could heft a full-size ox, you have trained for this event. I, on the other hand, with my measly two children, have not; hence, for me this was the equivalent of having a full grown bull dropped into my waiting arms.)
To compensate for the fact that my charges had me totally outnumbered I resorted to a trick that every parent is aware of, but no child-rearing book ever mentions: bribery. First it was the pizza, and then, when that no longer entertained them (about thirty seconds after the pizza arrived), it was cold hard cash: every time the natives started to get a little restless I would pull another twenty out of my purse and buy yet another round of game tokens. In no time at all this largesse on my part–coupled with the fact that, in exasperation at their pitifully low Skeeball scores I finally got up and showed them how to cheat (what are they teaching our kids in school these days, anyway?)–meant that by the end of the evening there was a pile of tickets on the table taller than Kip’s nachos. Which meant that before we could leave we would have to redeem these tickets for prizes. Which is where the Worst Job in the World comes in.
My only hope for a karmically decent future life lies in my firm belief that the girl behind the prize booth counter at Peter Piper Pizza had just come back from an extended “smoke” break in the back of a VW bus; otherwise, I am sure that the hell this group of children put her through will condemn me to being reincarnated as Paris Hilton’s purse dog. Here’s how it went:
PPP Girl: “You have 761 tickets.”
Children: (45 second group consultation) “We’ll have a piece of bubblegum.”
PPP Girl: “You have 759 tickets.”
Children: (another 45 second committee meeting) “We’ll have another piece of gum.”
PPP Girl: “You have 757 tickets.”
And so on. For twenty-five freakin’ minutes. At first I found myself wishing that I’d brought a book to read, but towards the end I was wishing I had instead brought pencil and paper–by the time they had picked out thirty pieces of bubblegum, 9 sugar straws, 3 Styrofoam gliders, 1 candy watch and 5 pieces of plastic “bling” I could have written my own book. Maybe even a book on something useful, like, perhaps: how to fix a busted Skeeball machine.