Have you ever felt paralyzed with fear at the thought of bringing your children into someone’s home?
I always feel like saying, “Sure. Do you have homeowners insurance? Really? How much is your deductible?”
Never believe people when they say, “Sure! C’mon over. And bring those cute kids of yours.”
They’re well-meaning and all, but clueless.
If they have no children themselves, or their kids have been grown for a long time, then they are sitting ducks for Fisher Family Wrecking Crew.
“Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!” I always want to cry, just to give them a heads-up about what’s actually coming for them.
Why not just bring in Attila the Hun and his thundering hordes while you’re at it?
Instead, I just bring my clipboard and pencil over and walk around the proposed site like the advance Secret Service crew would for a presidential visit.
“Antiques? Check. Limoges porcelain? Check. Cupboards that can be climbed with a cookie jar on top? Check. White furniture? Check. Hand-blown Venetian glass collection? Check. Visible electronics? Check.”
After my inspection, I meet with the homeowner involved.
“Here’s a list of things that must be put away for their own safety before we can come over,” I explain. “And the white couch has to be covered. When you’ve made the necessary retrofits, give me a call. Or, we can just meet at a neutral location.”
Before I had children, I used to wonder why my friends stopped socializing with me after they experienced the miracle of birth.
I like kids and being around them. I felt a little slighted that my friends no longer accepted my invitations.
Later, much later, I came to realize that people with young children, like zebras on the Masai Mara, tend to hang out in packs for safety.
Only other parents can be trusted not to run screaming when that pizza that went down so smoothly comes back up – all over the new Berber carpet.
Only other parents have the correct arsenal of sippy cups, plastic bowls, duct tape and sappy G-rated videos necessary to survive the onslaught without casualties.
Only other parents won’t judge you when they walk into your house and promptly step on a carpet of Legos that escaped from the bin, before encountering the crunchy zone.
I still recall my child-free friend getting into my 4Runner and recoiling in horror at the Cheerios ground into the carpet, the wrappers and other detritus that my little angels had left in the back seat.
“You could vacuum back here, you know,” she pontificated at me while wiping down the seat before she placed her rear on it.
Now, let me mention that her big yellow Scooby Doo-like puppy, who was like her child at the time, had recently become carsick and thrown up in my purse on the way to Joshua Tree.
I don’t mean he threw up on my purse. I mean he threw up in my purse. Yeah. He did. It was disgusting.
So when she said that, I thought to myself, “No, actually I can’t because I don’t have two seconds left in my day after I work full time and then come home to be a single mom, but someday you’ll have a child and then you’ll get a clue.”
And, sure enough, she did have a kid, and I’m pretty sure there are ground-in Cheerios now in her back seat.
Contact the writer: 714-796-7994 or mfisher@ocregister.com
