The Feeding of the Children

One day at the recent family reunion, I found myself driving back from the park with two of my sister's youngest kids. How I ended up driving two little kids all by myself, I have no idea. This was not my plan. But that's not unusual. I never have a plan. I don't like plans. But the problem with never having a plan, is that once in a while you end up with two little kids in the car with you. And you're in charge of their welfare. And that's no good. I'm pretty sure I was set up.

The idea is that all of the relatives were supposed to leave the park, go grab whatever they wanted for dinner, and meet back at the hotel around 5:30 to eat. That was the idea. And if I had been all by myself in that car, I would have been the first person to arrive back at the hotel. And I would have finished eating my dinner before anyone else showed up. And I would have been happy.

But I had two little kids to feed.

Unfortuantely, I don't know how to feed kids.

I don't want to feed kids.

But these were my nephews. Two cute little boys, who I love. And I was responsible for them. So I decided I would do my best to feed them.

Now I'm absolutely no good when it comes to anything having to do with kids. I don't even know exactly how old these boys are. I estimate somewhere between 0 and 10. All I know is that one of them is about a year older than the other. But I did learn a few things during this little journey.

First, I learned that you should always tell a kid what he is GOING TO EAT. You should NEVER ask a kid what he WANTS to eat. If I had known about this rule ahead of time, the three of us would have been back at that hotel in about 5 seconds enjoying our dinner of Skittles and Dr. Pepper. But I made the mistake of asking, and they said they wanted pizza. That might not be so bad, but I then asked them what kind of pizza they wanted. It then took the three of us 16 hours to agree on Pizza Hut.

So then I looked up Pizza Hut on the GPS thingie on my phone. Unfortunately, my stupid phone doesn't let me just press something to automatically dial the number. I had to commit the number to memory, switch to the phone part, and then dial the number. But then I figured, Hey, there's three of us here. We can each memorize a few numbers and it'll be easy!

So I memorized the area code. Then I said, "Hey Joseph, here's a number: 345. Can you remember that? 345."

"Uh huh."

"What's your number Joseph?"

"345."

"Good! And Jacob, here's your number: 8672. You got it?"

"8672," he said.

"Good!"

Then I turned off the GPS thingie and got to the phone key pad. I dialed the area code. Then I said, "Okay Joseph, what your number?"

"3."

"Jacob, did you remember your number?"

"4."

It took me 7 minutes and 19 seconds to remember all 10 numbers myself and dial Pizza Hut to place the order.

But Pizza Hut must have ditched all of their phones during the economic downturn, because I couldn't get anybody to answer that number. So I began driving to the restaurant, praying to God the whole way that when we arrived it had not burned down or been turned into a Jiffy Lube.

Ten minutes later we arrived at Pizza Hut. Of course I had to order two different kinds of pizzas because these two little kids insisted on different toppings. I suppose I could have had them split the toppings on one pizza, but I didn't think of that because I'm stupid.

They told me it would be 25 minutes before the pizza was done. This is when I learned another lesson about little kids. For little kids, 25 minutes equals 25 years. I guess there was a time when I was the same way -- years ago when I was a little kid. But now I'm old, so 25 years is like 25 minutes to me.

For the next 17 minutes I kept saying stuff like: "Hey, you guys come sit down over here" ... "Hey leave that alone" ... "Hey stop that" ... "Hey don't do that" ...

At about minute 17, the younger of the two boys had exhausted all possibilities and was now lying face down on the disgusting Pizza Hut floor. I was going to make him get up, because I think that's what my sister would have wanted me to do. But then I decided that's what she gets for sticking me with two kids who, although very cute, cannot memorize numbers or agree on one topping. So I allowed him to continue to explore the goo on the floor until the pizzas were done.

We arrived back at the hotel over an hour late.

Everyone else was already finished eating.

I was exhausted.

Our pizza was greasy.

But I did return both kids in one piece.

Even though Joseph had Pizza Hut's floor on his face.

The end.