The Tang Booby Trap

When my first two daughters were in early grade school, I woke up one morning feeling terribly ill.  I had a miserable cold, and my total focus was that if I could get them out the door and on their way to school, I could go back to bed.

I staggered down to the kitchen, only to discover that the older child, who was probably 7 or 8 at the time, had already been up and had apparently had a desire for Tang for breakfast.  She had attempted to mix it herself and had encountered difficulties. Both liquid and powdered Tang were pretty much everywhere…all over the countertop and table, on the floor and inside both the refrigerator and freezer.  When I inquired as to how this could possibly be, she explained that she had the faucet turned the wrong way and had used warm water.  Obviously, she didn’t want to drink warm Tang, so she had tried to cool it down in the refrigerator.  But, when she could see that wasn’t going to work fast enough, she had tried the freezer.  The container was too full, and you get the picture.

Sick and exhausted, I sent her back upstairs to get dressed for school, and somehow managed to clean up the mess, get the girls’ breakfast and send them on their way.  I fixed my own breakfast and collapsed into my chair at the table.  I realized too late that I had just sat down in a puddle of Tang.  I put my head down on the table and cried.  Now, I had to change my pajamas before I could go back to bed.

This was not the first time, and certainly not the last, that this particular daughter booby trapped my life in some way.  At least, I was eventually able to laugh about this incident.