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Mommy and the Typhoid Twins
It’s 6:00 AM and 12 degrees on the Tuesday before
Christmas. I back down a long suburban driveway for
a 6:15 AM pickup of a woman plus three extra passengers.
At about 6:10, the woman comes out to tell me that the
bags are ready to go. Now she’s the typical kept
housewife, no job, three to four kids and the most serious
thing she has to deal with on a daily basis is keeping
her yoga appointment. I get out of the car to fetch
the bags off the porch, dump them in the trunk and out
comes a boy and girl about seven years old.
The girl gets in first and dutifully puts her seatbelt
on. The boy, who’s jacket isn’t zipped up,
gets in and says “I won mommy sit in the middle.”
I tell him to zip up his jacket and he says “I
don no how.” I zip it for him and then ask “So,
what do you say?” And after a few seconds he replied
“Huh?” Great, no manners and he can’t
zip up his own damn jacket. Future pampered star material
here.
They both offer up that they are sick. That’s
fucking wonderful, just what I need, unpaid time off.
“I’ve got strep.” The girl says, with
the same intonation as if she was happily announcing
“Daddy bought me a pony!” Which probably
isn’t far from the truth with these people. Not
to be left out, the boy said “ib god a colb”
sounding just like Chucky from the Rugrats. Now, I’m
thrilled that I have to detox the car after they smear
the doors and windows with their germ infested, nasal
secretions, turning the car into a rolling petri dish.
A short while later, Mommy comes out carrying an infant.
I ask her if she’s got a car seat for the baby.
She says, “Oh no, that’s too much to deal
with.” That’s terrific. Not only do I have
Cough and Wheezy sitting behind me, I’ve also
got an overburdened mommy holding a 30 lb. highly animated
projectile in her arms.
Now if this was my company, I would refuse to move
the car one inch until she got the car seat. But because
I work for single-focus scumbags, I have to transport
them, no matter what. So I take a shallow breath and
head towards JFK.
On the way down, the Typhoid Twins have this odd fascination
with the macabre. They get very excited when we passed
not one, but two different cemeteries. “Look Mommy,
tombstones!” and “Wow, there sure are a
lot of dead people there.” Any birds in flight
became buzzards. I wonder what hallucinogens Mommy sprinkles
on their Cream of Wheat each morning, or does the nanny
do that job for her also.
To round out this lovely joyride, I’ve got Baby
Huey using his mommy as a ladder so he can climb up
on the rear deck for a better view out back. He’s
also very handy locking and unlocking the doors and
attempting to open his window. Mommy’s clue free.
She’s busy singing Christmas songs to herself
and thinks this is all so cute. Ah, to be oblivious.
As soon as we get to the airport, I jump out and dump
their bags at the curb. I don’t even bother to
wait for a thank you that isn’t coming, I got
back in the car and got the hell out of there.
On the way back, as I’m crawling in bumper to
bumper traffic, some putz in a Saab doesn’t hit
the brakes until after he stamps his license plate into
my rear bumper. Thankfully, the physics major wasn’t
breaking the land speed record, otherwise It would have
been a hellacious whiplash and more money out of my
pocket. Like the recent $125 double parking ticket,
that was unknowingly deducted from my paycheck.
Technically I was “Double Standing” with
my flashers on. I saw the traffic cop coming, circled
the block, came back around and my client jumped in.
Usually they don’t write you up if you move, but
this character must have been scoring brownie points
and working towards his quota, on my account. I would
have fought the ticket on a great web site called parkingticket.com,
but my benevolent employers plead guilty and paid it.
With my money, and without my permission. Nothing like
working for free.
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