Didn't I Feed You Yesterday__ A Mother's Guide to Sanity in Stilettos - Laura Bennett [48]
Driving home from the country the other night, we stopped for gas an hour outside of Manhattan, as is our habit. The best way to enjoy living in New York City is to run screaming from it every Friday. The downside is the effort required to transport five boys three hours in one car without incident. Necessity demands a midway break. We stop to fill the tank and let anyone who is still awake buy junk food from the gas station mini-mart. Pumping gas holds a phallic fascination for my boys, and Peter wasn’t there to say no, so they immediately started begging me to let them wield the nozzle.
“Wait in the car; just let me do it myself,” I said, but it was too late. The doors flew open and three of them escaped. Once a child is out of a five-point-harness car seat, there is little I can do to stem the riptide of testosterone. A scuffle ensued at the pump, because Pierson thought he should be the one in charge, and by the time I swiped my card and chose the octane level, Truman had won the battle with his brothers and was filling the tank. Truman has pumped gas before and he seemed to have it under control so I stepped aside, resisting any arguments from Pierson and Larson about how the scenario was unfair.
When the pump detected that the tank was full, the nozzle clicked and Truman, on cue, pulled it out of the car. Somehow forgetting his previous expertise, he failed to let go of the lever that stops the gas. Flammable liquid shot everywhere at full speed. He pointed the nozzle up, as if to use gravity to stop the deluge, but that only caused a gasoline fountain. Larson, Pierson, and I were screaming at him to let go when gas splashed into his eyes, and he finally dropped the hose— which thankfully released the lever and stopped the river of gas. Pierson, who had been right up in Truman’s grille vying for the pump, was soaked with gas and standing in a puddle of it. He looked down at his saturated clothes.
“I’m gonna blow!” he yelled over and over, taking off running in hysterical circles. The poor kid had recently watched the scene in Zoolander where the male models have a gasoline fight to the tune of “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” by Wham! on their way to buy orange mocha frappuccinos, then one of them lights a cigarette and sends everyone up in flames.
“Mom, I’m gonna blow!” he kept repeating. Peik, previously too lazy to leave the van, leaped out of the car and added to the mayhem by running around the gas station parking lot screaming, “I’ve got a match!” This sent Pierson into even greater hysteria. Meanwhile I did what I could to get us back on the road, picking up the hose and putting it in the machine while trying to avoid the puddles and not get gasoline on my Manolos.
“Screw the cap on,” I directed Truman, trying not to yell at him in front of the gathering crowd. “Can you manage that?”
“But, Mom, really, it should be impossible to pull the pump out of the car while the gas is flowing,” Truman insisted. “It must have malfunctioned.”
“No, you dipwad,” Peik said, taking a break from scaring the hell out of his little brother in order to debase this one. “How would you be able to fill a gas can, genius?”
Pierson had to be stripped of his soaked clothing. Larson, who was dressed as good Spider-Man, offered his bad alter ego Spider-Man costume, which he naturally had with him in case of emergency. It had built-in chest muscles and was so small it gave Pierson a wedgie and came up to his shins, but he was happy to put aside sartorial grievances in order to save himself from immolation. I threw his gas-soaked clothes in a garbage can.
“The show is over, folks,” Peik announced to the parking lot crowd as we boarded the van and drove away. Once we were safely back on the road, we really gave it to Truman, who was embarrassed and angry that we were laughing at him for potentially turning our van into a suicide bomb.