What Parents Shouldn’t Do

One of a parent’s main responsibilities is to keep their under-aged kids out of bars. Yet a few weeks ago, we spent the better half of a weekend trying to sneak our 7 and 10 year old girls into a club where their father’s band was playing.
David invited us to join him for the weekend in Palm Springs where his band had booked a gig at an Indian casino. Rarely do the girls and I get invited along on gigs, and given that there was a free room in a new hotel with a nice pool involved, we drove down and met him there, ready to enjoy.

The first time he mentioned trying to get them in to see him play, I pointed out that he was performing in a club in the casino and that even if the girls were, “…with the band,” their age would not be overlooked. But David got it in his head that he really wanted them to see him play and he was going to “explore” every opportunity to get them in. He asked the front desk to check and see if there was an age restriction in the lounge where they were playing. Of course there was. It was a bar with people kicking back shots and the shots were not smoothies. Then he talked to the sound man and asked if they could stand next to him in the booth. He asked the waitress if there was a dark corner in the VIP lounge (because that’s where you want your kids to be, in dark corners in lounges with bottle service) where they could sit unnoticed for 15-20 minutes. He tried bringing them in during rehearsal while the club was closed and having them sit at the table by the stage. The bartenders and waitresses were fine with it, but when the manager saw my girls sitting ring-side, she quickly informed David that they had to go. He tried to feign innocence, seeming surprised that even with the bar closed, it was off limits to them. I used to waitress in a bar in college. I knew his multiple schemes were not going to work. After all, a liquor license is a terrible thing to lose.

At first, I tried to talk him out of it. Then, I mentioned how (truly) tired the girls were. There are many reasons kids shouldn’t be bar hopping, one very basic one is that they get tired early and want to go to bed. Finally, I told him that I didn’t want to be the one to get yelled at or incarcerated because he wanted me to sneak them into a club to watch him play. Yes, it was important to him, and in many ways his reasons were incredibly sweet and sentimental, but was seeing him worth a criminal record?

As a compromise, I looked around and realized that the ice cream parlor next door to the club lounge was open from 5am until 2am – because every club needs an ice cream parlor next door – and that if the girls and I ordered ice cream and stood directly in front of the ice cream parlor door pretending to read the menu, we had a direct view of the stage from the front door of the club.

So my children got to see their father play without breaking local, state and probably federal laws. I’m glad, because even though it’s holiday time, my idea of a family Christmas portrait is not a mug shot.

Drop and Roll

Nicole set herself on fire yesterday. Over the last year, she has begged to take on more duties in the kitchen, graduating from mixing and measuring to working with the oven and more recently the stove. Mac and cheese has become her signature recipe, with variations added each time she makes it as she tries to expand her repertoire of recipes. But yesterday, while making ice cream, she wanted to take on the job of stirring the milk mixture in the pan while it cooked on the stove. I hesitated for a moment, but since she has been boiling the noodles for pasta for months now, I didn’t see the harm in letting her stir while the pan was over an open flame.

As she stirred, I insisted that she hold the pan so that she didn’t accidentally knock the mixture off the stove and onto herself. Having done that once when I was younger, I remember being so thankful that I had decided to wear jeans that day and that the pot of hot cream sauce hit my pants and not my bare skin. But since that day, my rule has always been, hold onto a pot when you’re stirring it. But the pot handle was hot, so Nicole used an oven mitt so that she wouldn’t have to touch the pot handle directly. I turned my back for a second to get another ingredient and that’s when it happened. And it happened very quickly.

I smelled it first – it was like the faint smell of bad incense. But then the smell grew more intense. I turned around and saw that the oven mitt Nicole was still holding in her hand was on fire. The odd thing is, she continued stirring, not realizing that it was burning. I couldn’t even speak – it seemed to happen so fast. A thousand thoughts raced through my brain in an instant…Fire, fire, fire, get it out of her hand, don’t let the pan spill on her, don’t let her hair catch on fire. I think I yelled. I’m not even sure. I know I kept saying, “The mitt, the mitt…” unable to form a full sentence. As I was babbling, I reached for the mitt, trying to take it out of her hand, but since she didn’t realize it was on fire- because she was looking at her mother going beserk instead of looking at her hand- she pulled her hand, with the burning mitt on it, away from me, trying to keep me from taking it away from her. She pulled the mitt back towards her shoulder, setting her shirt on fire.

At that point, I started hitting her arm, trying to squelch the flame, then the fire drill practice I’d been taught in second grade kicked into gear and I threw her onto the floor and started rolling her around. It was all I could remember them telling us to do as a kid, “Don’t run if you’re on fire, it will only make the flame grow. Fall to the ground and roll.” So that’s what we did. Natalie walked into the kitchen to see what all the commotion was about and saw Nicole and I rolling on the floor, trying to put out the fire on Nicole's shirt sleeve.

It was over in a second. The mitt was totaled. Nicole’s shirt slightly singed. Nicole is perfectly fine. The funny thing was, she didn’t even realize she was on fire. She thought I was jumping on her and couldn’t figure out why. I couldn't stop shaking. Even after it was all over and everything was fine, I had to sit down because my legs were shaking and I didn't let on how upset I still was thinking about what could have happened.

When we told my husband the story at dinner later that night, Nicole proudly showing him her shirt and the burned oven mitt, David looked at me and said, “You tried to put out the fire by rolling around on the WOOD floor?” Maybe he has a point. I don’t know. In an emergency, you act by instinct. Hopefully, that instinct is correct.

Natalie listened while Nicole finished telling what happened, finally interrupting to say, “After all that, that ice cream better be good.” She’s right, it better be.