Moral of the story: Always be late to everything

Look, I asked Some Guy to add this to the pictures that come up on the banner (I’m too lazy to figure out how to do it myself):

It’s me, all made-up-like, before I left with my mother and daughters to the Fabulous Fox to see Mary Poppins last August. The top of the head on the bottom right belongs to my daughter RS, and the shoulder and head slice on the right belong to my mother. I figure this fabulous and foxy picture will help balance out the one of me at the Boy’s bris, when I was looking mildly post-partum. (If you don’t already know which one that is, I ain’t going to tell you.)

Want to hear a השגחה story? It will set to rest all your doubts about the existence of God, and settle the question once and for all as to whether or not God intervenes in human affairs. Ready?

So, some weeks ago, I called our pediatrician, Dr. S, to make checkup appointments for my four children. The Boy had his last week. RS will have hers next week. The twins were scheduled to have theirs today at 9:30 AM. Of course, I was going to need to bring the Boy, what with Babysitter Allison having “class” or something like that, and my baby siSter using her non-teaching day to do something called “errands.” And of course, I had to borrow my baby siSter’s second car, since ours is currently in the Bronx being tinkered with by Joe the mechanic. So my brother-in-law left the car in the shul parking lot this morning (the shul is a block or two from my house), and sent the keys home with G. And here’s what happened next.

7:45 AM: G has left for yeshiva. RS has left for school. Twins are still asleep. More to the point, the Boy is still asleep. This means Miriam can go back to sleep. I make a running leap into my bed while thinking to myself that I’m going to have to leave the house with the three of them no later than 9:00 if we’re going to have time to walk to the shul, load everyone up, and drive to Riverdale by 9:30. This means I’d better get the girls up by 8:15.

8:35 AM (heh): Miriam is awakened by Boy crying. Oops.

8:35-9:35: Miriam rushes around like mad, getting herself and kids up, dressed, fed, etc. It’s cold out. Can’t find one of R’s gloves. Can’t find one of Boy’s shoes. Can’t find one of Boy’s mittens. Apparently my family would like to reduce its number of appendages. Finally find shoe, but not mitten or glove. Gobble up bagel, bring stroller outside, bundle up very excited Boy (”Bye bye! Bye bye! Jacket! Tollo (stroller)!”), put coffee in drink holder on top of stroller, walk briskly to shul while either attempting to drink coffee while pushing stroller with one hand, or pushing stroller with both hands while large quantities of coffee leap out of cup through the small hole in the cover. Arrive at shul parking lot and discover that G tossed the carseats into the back seat of baby siSter’s car instead of installing them. Install carseats, buckle everyone in, pull out of parking lot amidst much screeching of tires. Call Dr. S’s office and apologize profusely, tell them we’ll be there “soon.”

9:54: Arrive at Dr. S’s office and begin the long, torturous ritual of attempting to find parking.

10:05: Give up, park illegally, enter office with kids.

10:05 onward: Wait a few minutes in waiting room. Boy happily plays with toys. They call us in. We go to the back. Boy sees Dr. S and immediately begins to scream. Amidst much screaming by the Boy, including cries of “Door!” and “No!”, Dr. S and I engage in the following conversation:

Dr. S: What are they here for?

Miriam: Checkups.

Dr. S: They aren’t due for checkups yet. They had checkups in April.

Cue stunned look by Miriam. April?! Suddenly Miriam remembers. The twins’ birthday last year was on Rosh Hashanah. We were waiting until after the chagim before we scheduled checkups. Almost immediately after the chagim, we encountered the Psycho Evil Pneumonia From Hell. When R was finally totally better (HA) (except for that whole narrowing-artery thing we didn’t know about), we had forgotten all about checkups. Hence, April. Hence, a lunatic morning spent getting ready for appointments that should not exist. (The precise placement of the chagim + pneumonia also accounts for our sukkah having been left outside all year long last year. Heh. ) (yes, all year long) (it was disassembled, however) (though not by us)

But perhaps all is not lost. R had a wimpy little fever last night (probably the same dumb virus a bunch of us have had), and will hence not be going to school. So perhaps instead of a checkup, Dr. S can check that out, and then both girls can get seasonal flu shots (the Boy got his last week). Dr. S only has seasonal flu shots, see, which I know because I called her answering machine the other day to check. She ran out of H1N1 a while ago and doesn’t know if she’ll be getting another shipment. Being bad parents, as well as the type who don’t really get worked up over these things, we haven’t yet stormed the barricades to find another source of H1N1. But at least we’ll get the seasonal one while we’re here.

Amidst much howling by the Boy (”Door! Door! No!”), Dr. S says she’d like to give R a baseline exam anyway, since she hasn’t seen her since April. She also says she spoke to Dr. SuperStroke. “Amazing,” she says (indeed ). “Answered all my questions. We’re going to reorder the MRI and blah blah blah, assuming radiology has the right blah blah blah, etc.” Boy is screaming too loud to allow me to have any conversation. Dr. S suggests I take him out while she checks R. Very odd to leave my kid during a doctor’s exam, but hey, her 7 year-old twin is with her. I take the Boy back to the waiting room where he immediately stops crying, starts grinning, and climbs onto this odd sea creature-like seesaw sort of toy, saying “Cow! Cow!” Or possibly, “Car! Car!” They sound the same, see, and the sea creature doesn’t look much like either.

Dr. S calls us back in. We stand in a different room and discuss R, who, by the way, has a borderline ear infection. Then….

Miriam: Ok, so can they get their seasonal flu shots?

Dr. S: I’m all out. I only have it for kids under 3.

Cue another stunned look by Miriam.

Miriam: You’ve got to be kidding me.

Dr. S: I’m supposed to be getting it in tomorrow. Oh, wait (she notices some boxes that some burly men have just dropped off) – unless this is it. Yeah, this might be it. Wait just a minute, and we’ll check.

We wait. It’s almost 11:00. If we’d gotten here on time, we almost definitely would have left by now. Dr. S reappears, and…. (ready for the climax?)

“You’re in luck. It’s H1N1. All of them can get it. I have for below 3 and over 3.”

Cue stunned look by Miriam, #3.

Well! Would you look at that! H1N1! No storming barricades, no waiting in line for an hour, no fighting through desperate crowds – in fact, no effort by me whatsoever! This was a total coincidence! Right place at the right time! H1N1, handed to my kids on a silver platter. Woohoo!

So. Believe in God yet?

On the way home, YS told me she thinks “Hashem did it on purpose, because He knew we were going to get the swine flu, and He wanted us to get the shot. So He made it get delivered right before we left.”

I agree, except Hashem did even more than that. He made me sleep past 8:15, see, which is what set the events in motion that allowed us to still be there when the stuff arrived. So, see what I mean? There is a god!! And He does intervene in human affairs! Let’s see those atheists argue with that!

Of course, my son is never again going to believe a thing I say, because as I was attempting to shut him up soothe him, I kept saying “Don’t cry! This is just for your sisters! You aren’t getting a shot!” But then he did. Heheh.

I have many other stories. But I think they’ll wait. We’ll just let you savor this one for a while. You can hear all about my new clothes and the lice (yes, more lice) and the bar mitzvah some other day.

Tags: Kids