My son announced he was joining the school yearbook. Trying not to show my delight out of fear of scaring him away, I mentally congratulated myself: Yay! Yearbook is safer than wrestling or running, and the uniform is way more affordable.
After the first meeting he declared that he'd signed up to photograph cross country meets and the first was somewhere less than 1100 miles away and he had to get there right after school tomorrow, and I'm like: Okay, Bud, let's have a little talk about after school activities. It appears that, at least until you can drive, it'll be mainly my responsibility to get you to and from your extra-curriculars, so let's set some ground rules, shall we? How about some advance notice when an event is coming up; for example, instead of announcing that the meet is this afternoon and you need me to drive you nearly half the length of the Oregon Trail by 4 pm, can you let me know at least a day in advance? How's that work for you, Pal?
Grudgingly he agreed that, since I control the car keys, I might be making some sense, so Saturday morning we got up early and headed out with ample time to make it to the first race of the weekend.
As soon as we arrived at the park and parked in one of the park parking lots, Robey bolted with the camera, leaving Cupcake to carry the case because he's a good delegator that way. Cupcake and I and Miss Puppy set out for the field at a more leisurely pace. After circumnavigating a significant portion of park acreage trying to find the designated field, then tracing the drenched and muddy perimeter of the field in search of the white tent marking home base for Robey's school, we found: a couple of trainers, a few students, some parents -- but no Robespierre.
Just as it was dawning on me that I might have lost my kid, who probably didn’t have his cell phone because that would be too logical, my phone rang with a vaguely familiar caller id. It was Robey, calling from the zoo, and I was like: Robespierre, my darling, how in H.E.Double Toothpicks did you end up at the zoo?!
So Cupcake and I and Miss Puppy got back in the car and picked up Robey, who was waiting sheepishly outside the zoo, and we drove back to the meet, this time parking in a more suitable lot, and everything was pleasant and perfect from then on.
Game over, right? Happily ever after, right?
You don’t know us very well, do you?
While Robey was snapping photos of muddy high school students, Cupcake entertained herself by schlucking back and forth across an out-of-use ball field. She’d trudge to the middle, leaving gigantic, goopy footprints in the mud, and then slog back to the edge, where I’d pretend not to know her; then she’d start all over again.
Eventually Cupcake called out that she was stuck and I told her she was funny and then pretended not to know her some more.
She repeated that she was stuck and I told her to stop kidding around.
Then she pulled her foot out of her shoe and the shoe stayed where it was and I wasn’t laughing any more.
So, here’s where things stood:
- Cupcake is stuck in the mud thirty yards away
- She can’t gain leverage to bend down and dislodge her shoe
- If she abandons the shoe, she’ll have to wade through mud up to her eyeballs to get to the edge of the field, at which point I’ll have to shoot her, not to mention that she’ll be sacrificing approximately half of a pair of fairly new sneakers
- I’m standing on the edge of the muddy field, holding the leash of a dog who is, to say the least, excitable and unpredictable
- I could abandon Cupcake as an example to those foolish enough to consider following her lead, but then I’d be stuck with all of her clothes and an unused bedroom
Heaving a sigh of resignation, I plodded through the mud, praying for the mercy of the slapstick gods.
Miss Puppy and I slipped and slid out to the center of the field. Cupcake pulled her foot out of the mud-logged shoe, balancing on the other foot while leaning on my back. I bent over and pulled the loop on the heel of her shoe and… nothing happened. I mean, nothing. That sneaker was sunk in the mud like it was rooted there. Meanwhile, any moment some Labradoodle was sure to catch Miss Puppy’s attention and she’d be dragging us through the mud like a couple of stuntmen.
At times we looked like this:
Cirque
For a moment we looked like this:

de
And there was a moment when we looked like this:
Soleil
I pulled some more. I put my hand inside that shoe and yanked and wiggled it. Finally, with a huge sucking sound, the shoe splorked free of the nasty red glop, Cupcake slid her foot back inside it, and the three of us scrambled back to the edge of the field.
In the end, one of us looked like this:
Who won the races? Who cares? What is it with me and mud?