Red Wagon

By 3pm on the icey day of the snow storm a few weeks back, my family had had enough of each other. If action wasn't taken soon bodily harm was going to occur and since the roads were so bad, I knew the medics would have a hard time getting here. So I brainstormed a way to prevent such an act of violence and knew we need gross body movement to steam off energy. So I began calling friends. "If we walked to your house, would you let us in?" I half begged half joked in a fairly desperate voice. I quickly found a taker. This friend was 1.5 miles away and half of it was down hill - which meant walking home might be painful. I decided to take our sled so that if situation arose we could sled down, but really it would allow me to drag the kids up the hill in a worse case scenario. Then I realized I forgot my sled at my sisters house. We had purchased this awesome red wagon just weeks before on a great super sale. I was so excited about this wagon. I had purchased it for several reasons. One being to help facilitate the boys doing more yard work. They can't really manage our wheelbarrow, but they could drag all sorts of things around the yard with a wagon. I thought it might work as a substitute. So off we went, bundled up and toting a shinny new red wagon. It worked well on our street, but once we got the hill, it had been plowed so the sides were not smooth enough for a wagon. I decided to ditch the wagon off the road under a tree. There was no one out except some cars so I thought this was safe enough place. Xander on the other hand felt I had bad judgement. "Don't leave the wagon there! It will be stolen." I tell my kids all the time that their stuff will be stolen - but that is just because I am trying to motivate them to put their things away.

"It is not going to be stolen Xander." I protested.

So we continued on our journey. I had told my friend to expect us in 30 minutes if every thing goes well, and an hour if it didn't. But as we continued and Soren would gather every 3rd icicle, I knew we were on the 60 minute path. It was snowing and quite magical. The only real problem was we started at 3pm and it gets dark around 4:30 this time of year. I kept crunching the numbers, but no matter how short we stayed at our friends house, we were guaranteed a walk in the dark........a detail that the more I thought about, became a worse and worse idea. By 4pm we were about 4 blocks away, but my rational self got the better of me and I turned us around - as failures. But were we really failures? Every single one of us had all our limbs and all our pints of blood. The boys surprisingly took it well. On the way up the hill we took a couple breaks as I told them tales of Narnia and the White Witch. Towards the top of the hill Xander was slacking a bit. I promised him a ride in our wagon the rest of the way if he could just reached the top. As we approached Xander says, "Mom, it is gone. Someone stole the wagon." Mid rebuttle I stopped cold. "Oh my gosh! You are right! Someone stole it!!" I said in horror and disbelief. "See I told you Mom." Xander said half smiling. It was almost worth loosing the wagon to be right over his mom it seemed. He kept saying it over and over again. "I told you not to put the wagon there. I knew someone would steel it......" blah blah blah. In frustration and anger I spat out, "Your right Xander. There are evil people in the world who just want to steal your stuff." I sort of felt bad after saying that but it kept Xander quite so it seemed worth it at the time. A block more down the road there was a older man out shoveling his driveway. "You kids enjoying a walk in the snow." "Yup" I replied with no joy in my voice. Then Xander informs the the guy, "Someone stole our wagon."

"How did someone steal your wagon?" inquired the man with a confused look on his face.

Then in true Xander form, he tells the man a whole long story that you can barely follow about our walk and how we ditch the wagon and walked forever then came back and then the wagon was gone. He pipes in, "My mom left in under the tree and I didn't think that was a good idea." The man chuckles and say, "Well I guess you were right."

Then without missing a beat Xander says, "There's evil people in the world you know."

I giggle a nervous giggle but the man full on laughs.

"Yeah, well my wife says I am one of them." he adds.

As we cover the last few blocks we try to make ourselves feel better by imagining scenarios were people need a wagon so badly they steal it. I think we decided it was a Dad with lots and lots of kids that he needed to take places in a wagon because his car broke down.

Farewell wagon. Enjoy your new owner.