A Big Backstory

Last Friday morning I walked my son into the high school's office to sign him in as late. The first secretary looked up and pointed out the late registration secretary around the corner of the desk. This second secretary looked up from her keyboard and said, “Is the reason for the lateness: family, weather, an appointment, or something else?”

Um...what? Which category? Which one category? My brain couldn't process that. My reasons fit into a bunch of those categories. In fact, I had a whole backstory full of reasons. So I stood there like an idiot. How the heck could I distill my morning to fit into just one category? So out spilled the whole sorry story.

What I told them went something like this:

I got up early, got the girls breakfast and drove [in treacherous snowy weather] to skating rink for 7am. I found out my son had missed the bus because hubby was stuck in a ditch and didn't get home to wake him up. After arranging for another mom to take the girls to school, I drove [in treacherous snowy weather] past home to find hubby at the roadside getting his vehicle towed. I drove [in treacherous snowy weather] hubby home to change clothes, also picked up son, and drove [in treacherous snowy weather] to town to drop hubby at a critically important appointment in one end of town and then drove [in treacherous snowy weather] to the other end of town to sign son in at school. And I needed to leave immediately because I had to drive back home [in treacherous snowy weather] to the village library where I was now likely to be a few minutes late for my annual job evaluation, after which time I could expect hubby’s text so I could drive back into town [in treacherous snowy weather] to pick him up, and then drive [in treacherous snowy weather] back home again. Did I mention that town and home are like 20 minutes apart in good weather?

Gad, no wonder those secretaries laughed at me. And no wonder no one wants to have an entire backstory dumped on them at once.