Shoes and Other Fun

This is a memo to my kids’ friends’ mothers. Thanks for nothing ladies. You all let me down.

Apparently, there’s a leprechaun thing and no one told me.

Saturday, St. Patrick’s Day, I was out all day with my kids. We had a great day.  When we got home I sent them to bed and sat back on the sofa to relax with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. But then my daughter walked in and she was crying. She was sad the leprechaun hadn’t shown up. What leprechaun? The leprechaun, she told me, the one that had visited all of her friends’ houses. What was she talking about? “I wrote him a note, and left it in my room,” she cried. “I asked him to come to our house.”

“Leprechauns don’t come to people’s houses,” I told her.

“They do. They visited my friends and knocked over chairs. That’s what they do. They mess up the house and in my note I asked him to mess up our house.”

I looked around. We’d never be able to tell if a leprechaun visited us.

She was still crying.

I hadn’t seen the note. I didn’t know about leprechauns. I was pissed.

Aren’t we mothers supposed to stick together? Don’t we tell each other these kinds of things? How does everyone know about this stuff except for me? I was the last one to hear about the Elf on the…

The elf! This is about the damn elf.

I didn’t hear about the Elf in the Shelf until this past Christmas. And because I was a newbie, I made rookie mistakes. When my daughter wrote the elf a note, I wanted the elf to write back. And I didn’t want the elf to have familiar handwriting, so I used an elf-like bubble font.

I didn’t think it through — I had to write a stinking note every night in special handwriting. It was a nightmare. Sometimes I’d wake up at 3 in the morning and remember the elf. I’d have to turn on all the lights, find paper and pen and start composing clever elf notes.

When your little girls heard about our elf, things went from bad to worse. I started getting nasty emails and texts. They all started with WTF and accused me of breaking some secret mother code, of not following the rules. I’m not going to lie. The notes were mean. I felt threatened.

I’m sorry ladies. I messed up. I didn’t think the elf thing through. But getting me back by not telling me about the leprechaun? It’s just plain cruel.

My daughter went back upstairs and cried herself to sleep. And me? I stayed up until 1 a.m. cutting little shamrocks out of construction paper and sprinkling them all around the living room. My daughter was delighted when she came downstairs in the morning. Her brother was too. He asked me if I had made the shamrocks. “No,” I said. “Promise?” “Promise.” Crisis averted. Or so I thought.

And then this morning, a typical Monday, I was rushing around, late for work, trying to find my shoes, wondering if I there was anything to take for lunch, and lamenting the fact I hadn’t charged my cell phone, when my son asked me a question. “Was this really from a leprechaun?” (Yes, the paper shamrocks were still on the floor and will probably remain there until Christmas or I vacuum – whichever comes first.)

I gave him a big hug and said, “Sweetie, I did it. Don’t tell your little sister okay?” And then I went off frantically searching for my car keys. I was about to leave when my husband asked me what was wrong with our son. I went back into the living room and saw he was upset.

“Is this about the leprechaun,” I asked. He nodded. “You know, maybe leprechauns are real. Maybe I didn’t give the leprechaun a chance. Maybe if I believed…”

“Just stop,” he said disgusted. I went off to work and he went off to school – heartbroken.

I hope you’re happy ladies. All this over an elf? A childhood, abruptly halted. Innocence, lost. A mother, crushed. Over an innocent elf mistake.

This isn’t over ladies. Not by a long shot. Just you wait and see what the Easter Bunny does at my house this year. Game on girls.