Yes, that ~1 hour post promised delivery window rule is so standard that I’ve come to expect and rely upon it. It’s a rule that has never, in my experience, been broken. That is, until last week—by my arch nemesis (for other reasons) Sears.
“Your KitchenAid dishwasher will be delivered tomorrow between 11 and 1:00pm.”
“Thank you, I’ll be expecting them”, I reply. About 2pm or so, I’m guessing.
So tomorrow morning around 10-ish finds me in the living room with my young daughters, ages 7 and 9 (which, BTW, is the new 38 and premenopausal), watching some type of high-brow educational program on the television set, involving a rather absorbing, though squarish sort of fellow, as I recall.
Then, out of the blue, the doorbell rings, totally breaking my reverie over the on-screen undersea crustacean goings-on that was holding me mesmerized. Just as I was thinking, who the…?, my youngest bolts from my lap toward the front door. *Surely it can’t be the Sears guy, can it? *A quick glance through the doorway reveals that, yes indeed, it can and was the Sears guy, I can tell by the hat visible through the front door window.
Dang-burn it, I didn’t empty the dishes from the soon-to-be-sent-to-the-major-appliance-graveyard dishwasher, yet—how embarrassing. But, no sooner did that thought stop firing neurons in my brain, than an even more desperate one took its place. A very bad thought, indeed. You see, the only way to get to my bedroom from where I now was in the living room, was down the hall, crossing the foyer, in direct sight-line with the front door—the door my devilish young daughter, Beelzebub, was approaching at near light-speed. “Don’t answer that door until I…!”, but it was too late, the door was open before I could say any more.
The reason I was now obsessed with getting to my bedroom was because that was where my pants were and I really wanted the two of us to be reunited. Oh, I did have pants on, one can’t lounge around the house with young daughters without some type of concealment—but they were underpants. And, to be honest, if they were just your typical plain ol’ white tighty-whities or boxers, it would have been no big deal (flashing the deliveryman’s field of vision with a blur of white could have been easily explainable, I reasoned) . But, of course, they weren’t. No, by some quirk of psychology, this morning I pushed aside all my bland white underpants and chose to wear my bright yellow pair—the ones portraying the same fellow I was just watching on TV, ironically enough. Unfortunately, there’s really no protocol for upholding ones sense of dignity when one has a huge Spongebob Squarepants plastered on one’s crotch.
I had no choice, my daughters (the oldest decided to get in on the fun, too) were now chatting it up with the Sears delivery man in the foyer and calling for me to come out and greet him, I had to make a run for the bedroom and somehow explain the streaking yellow blur when I emerged fully clothed. At least there’s a good chance he won’t notice SpongeBob’s likeness on my manly bits and damages can be kept to a minimum. That probably would have worked, too, except for the fact that my wife had our wood floors waxed just last week. Feet clad only in socks scurrying across a freshly waxed floor have a low coefficient of friction (did I mention I was wearing socks?). *1,2,3, GO!*On my way speedily to the bedroom, I slipped on the floor just a couple of feet from the onlooking foyer trio, SpongeBob-side up, recovered and proceeded on to my destination, managing to squeek out, “I’ll be right with you” before closing the bedroom door.
Now, fully clothed and thinking maybe things weren’t all that bad after all, I open the door and walk down the hallway back toward the Sears guy and my two progeny, Diablo and Lucifer, just as they’re explaining, quite passionately, how their dad just loves SpongeBob Squarepants. “You’ve got a couple of funny girls here”, deadpans Mr. Sears Deliveryman.
“Yeah, it’s kind of a shame I’m enrolling ‘em in Military School next week and won’t get to see them much anymore.”
