As we often do, the girls and I broke up the Sunday-morning monotony with a little outing in the neighborhood. Since the new bike path is so nice, I proposed that they ride their bikes up the road a ways. Vivi liked this idea, but Julia said, no, “I prefer to walk and push Care Bear in the stroller.”
I knew that there was no way in the world she’d actually push the stroller the whole time – and thus that I’d end up carrying it for most of the walk – but I decided to let that go in favor of encouraging her to wear actual shoes and socks, rather than the sandals which she is literally wearing to shreds and which are also pretty terrible to wear while actually walking. This recommendation was rejected on her usual grounds: “Daddy, I don’t like the way shoes look with skirts! Sandals are much prettier with skirts!”
This is an argument I cannot win, so after my usual grumbles about how she’d be picking pebbles out of the straps and stumbling over rocks, we headed out. Vivi rode up ahead, riding her Big Wheel at a million miles an hour, and Julia trailed behind, pushing Care Bear in the stroller and stopping frequently to minister to the doll. After we stopped for our snack, Julia decided that she didn’t want to push the stroller anymore. I folded the $#&(#% thing up and started carrying it, trying at the same time to keep Vivi was veering off the path into the weeds.
Noticing that Julia wasn’t next to me, I turned around to find her sitting in the dirt, shaking rocks and sand out of her sandals. “Daddy, the rocks really hurt my feet!” I didn’t even respond, mostly because Vivi was again motoring toward some obstacle. As I corrected her course, I heard a scream from behind us. I whipped around. Julia was just getting up off the pavement after falling. Her right knee was magnificently bloody, and her left sandal was falling off her foot. “What happened, honey?” I asked, wiping the blood off her knee with my hand. She sobbed out, “My sandal strap wasn’t tight and the sandal made me trip!”
I derived no satisfaction from being right on every count. Thankfully, she got over the accident quickly and enjoyed the rest of the walk – even though sometimes we had to jog to catch up to Vivi.
You write so well that the reader can see it all play out in the mind’s eye — especially the reader who knows the cast so well. I sit here reading and laughing out loud. You’re right: there is little justice in parenting. Unfortunately, when you remind Julia of these problems prior to your next walk, she will have wiped them from her mind.