{"id":2470,"date":"2013-07-31T19:12:47","date_gmt":"2013-07-31T23:12:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/?p=2470"},"modified":"2013-08-17T12:33:33","modified_gmt":"2013-08-17T16:33:33","slug":"theres-time-fell-minivan-and-lcb-didnt-notice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/?p=2470","title":{"rendered":"Then There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the Time I Fell Under the Minivan (and LCB Didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Notice)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a sorry case, really.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Klutzy Awkward Gait Girl\u00e2\u20ac\u009d would be an accurate sobriquet for me<\/a>, as I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve mentioned.<\/p>\n

I do things like fall in the hallway at school<\/a>, for instance, for no apparent reason.<\/p>\n

Once even, while substitute teaching, I walked into a desk and narrowly escaped a face-first dive into the front row of students sitting before me. (Yeah, that was a career highlight of the highest order.)<\/p>\n

In my last post, I shared how I even once fell in the ocean<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So this next story should come as no surprise. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d forgotten about it until I was writing my last post.<\/p>\n

It happened a few months after the above-mentioned incident, during wintertime. We were spending a few days up in the great snowy North visiting family. One afternoon, we were walking to our minivan parked on the street. LCB had our older son and I was carrying the baby as we approached our vehicle. Living up to the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153L\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in his name (for loquacious)<\/a>, LCB stopped to speak with some nearby rocks.<\/p>\n

Okay, they were actually real live people, but those of you who know LCB or have heard tell of him know he could bleed extended conversation out of inanimate objects while combating malaria and lockjaw.<\/p>\n

He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that good.<\/p>\n

So LCB launched into discourse with strangers while I approached the van, holding the baby on my left hip as I did so. I remember deliberating over whether to enter into this conversation or whether I could get away with going gently into that good van<\/a> until the conversation ended.<\/p>\n

I decided to go gently into the van.<\/p>\n

Except that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not what happened.<\/p>\n

As I approached the passenger door, I slipped on the snow pile lining the street right beside the van door and, before I could blink, landed almost entirely under the minivan, face up. My eyes were about parallel with the side of the van, with the rest of me completely under it.<\/p>\n

Blessedly, like my ocean tumble, my son managed to fall unscathed, his momma\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hands tightly around his head.<\/p>\n

But then there I was.<\/p>\n

And here was the most awkward part of all: LCB stood on the other side of the van talking, completely and utterly and mind-numbingly oblivious to the fact that his wife and second-born son were now lying under the minivan, not entirely sure how they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d managed to get there.<\/p>\n

And thus, my predicament began. For I soon discovered it is one thing to slip under a minivan and quite another thing to get out from underneath one when one arm holds a child and a substantial snow pile must be ascended to do so.<\/p>\n

I tried to claw the snow with my free hand and push with my legs, to no avail.<\/p>\n

I realized I had two choices. Either I could find another way to get out from underneath that minivan, or I could scream like a banshee for help. Had LCB been my only possible witness, I have no doubt I would have screamed my fool head off, using a few select words in the process. But in this case, I knew I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have multiple witnesses, witnesses who were complete strangers. So I realized, in that epiphanous moment, that I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do it. Despite the fact that I had been brought low, so to speak, I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t willfully sink lower.<\/p>\n

I just couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do it.<\/p>\n

This meant finding my bootstraps.<\/p>\n

I sat, I mean lay there, and thought.<\/p>\n

I realized that in order to pull myself up, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have to have both hands, so I did the only thing I could think of. Slowly, I slid my son through the narrow gap between the vehicle and the snow, and then up the snow pile until I felt him reach the top. Then, I laid him on what I hoped was enough of a flat surface at the top to keep him from sliding down the pile in the other direction.<\/p>\n

Using both hands now, I clawed myself slowly up the pile until my head and shoulders were no longer under the van. Next, I turned myself sideways and pulled myself the rest of the way up the pile.<\/p>\n

I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t imagine what that must have looked like.<\/p>\n

Naturally LCB, in a typical man-like fashion, remained oblivious to our plight the entire time.<\/p>\n

Not to worry. In typical woman-like fashion, when I later told him about it, I blamed\u00c2\u00a0the whole thing\u00c2\u00a0entirely on him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a sorry case, really. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Klutzy Awkward Gait Girl\u00e2\u20ac\u009d would be an accurate sobriquet for me, as I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve mentioned. I do things like fall in the hallway at school, for instance, for no apparent reason. Once even, while substitute teaching, I walked into a desk and narrowly escaped a face-first dive into the front row […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[1542,1544,1543,1540,1541],"class_list":["post-2470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-islandlife","category-island-parenting","tag-embarrasing-minivan-stories","tag-funny-mom-stories","tag-my-htusband-can-talk-to-rocks","tag-slipping-on-snow-drifts","tag-surviving-a-midwest-winter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}