My nephew (and godchild) made his first communion last Saturday so we packed the family into the car and travelled down to my sisters house. Despite the high potential to do something blogworthy during the ceremony, the boys were impeccably well behaved. Even as the ceremony dragged on past the hour mark they stayed quiet and relatively still throughout.
My sister had organised a bouncy castle to entertain my nephew, his friends and various other kids who were invited to the celebrations and it worked a treat. The boys were unseen and rarely heard for long stretches as my niece and nephew entertained them and included them in their games.
I have to give my brother in law a lot of credit at this point. He did the work of an entire team of caterers by himself. There was lasagne, tikka massala and roast chicken available depending on personal tastes. He cooked, presented and cleaned up everything refusing all offers of help. I would say that he had earned a couple of cold beers by the end of the night but I wouldn’t be surprised if he had two beers and fell asleep in his armchair after the day he had.
We had planned to stay until late afternoon and then head home so that when the boys inevitably fell asleep in the car on the way home we would still have time to wake them, run them around a little bit and get them back to sleep at a reasonable time. The plan changed for a couple of reasons. Hannah was enjoying a nice glass of wine (a real rarity to get some daytime drinking in!), we had just finished eating and a dine and dash would have been a little rude but mainly because the boys were having a great time playing on the bouncy castle and it would have been a shame to interrupt them. We had brought their pyjamas with us and the plan changed to leaving at around eight (when they would normally go to bed), letting the boys sleep in the car and just lifting them straight into bed when we got home.
It should have been a picture book ending to the day. The boys had played all day and their eye lids were starting to get heavy. Myself and Hannah had been fed and watered and had really enjoyed the family day and there was a beautiful sunset off to the west.
Then we got a puncture.
The car wasn’t sounding great so we got out and checked the tyres but everything seemed fine. We got back in, drove a little further and I noticed that the car was pulling badly to the left. This time when we got out the front tyre on the passenger side was very clearly flat. No problem I thought, I will just change the tyre.*
I worked on the tyre while Hannah entertained the boys.** To my dismay, the spare was one of those tyres with a large warning on it not to exceed 80kmph. This meant I was going to be one of those people I despised that chugged along the motorway going 40kmph below the legal limit. I found this incredibly frustrating because I habitually drive too fast and use the speed limit only as a guideline. Very quickly my mood went from full and satisfied to tired and cranky.
Then the interrogation began.
“Daddy, why are you using that baby wipe on your hands?”
“Daddy, why is the sun still awake?”
I figured that I would answer a couple of these and then they would doze off, after all, by now it was nine o’clock and they are usually in bed by eight. Not to mention that any car journey longer than fifteen minutes induces narcolepsy.
80kmph is pretty fast. Unless you are on a motorway where everyone else is driving by at 120kmph or faster. Then it feels like you are driving a hearse. Or that you would be as quick getting out and walking home. In that situation, 80kmph feels like 8kmph and like I mentioned, I am not the most patient of drivers. Most importantly, we discovered that car induced narcolepsy only occurs at speeds in excess of 80kmph.
“Daddy, why are those trees there?”
“Daddy, why are we losing the race?”
He was of course referring to the fact that the cars easing past us gave us the feeling of being parked. The cherry on top was when Fat Chops chose this moment to ask me if I could show him how to tie his laces. I gritted my teeth, bit down the first answer that sprang to mind and let Hannah field that one.
Obviously, Fat Chops didn’t fall asleep until we were five minutes from home and Monkey Boy managed to stay awake the whole way. And, in case you were wondering, no, they didn’t sleep later in the morning after their late night. They were just grumpy all day Sunday instead.
*Interesting aside, to entertain herself while I was changing the tyre, Hannah took a picture and sent it to a couple of my siblings who had been at the party. Without exception they all expressed shock that I could change a tyre. I fully accept that I am more in touch with my feminine side than the average man but I would expect that any woman could change a tyre either. You loosen the nuts, jack up the car, remove one wheel, put on the spare, tighten the nuts and lower the jack. I have no idea to dry line my shed but changing a tyre is not one of the last existing bastions of machismo. I can’t get over how helpless my family think I am.
**In hindsight, this was probably a turning point in the evening. Entertaining the boys consisted of answering questions like “why are we stopped”, “what is Daddy doing?”, “why can’t I see daddy?” and so on. They were obviously just getting in the mood for an in depth interview.
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