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It's a darn good thing I don't run a tight ship at my home. Otherwise, I'd have myself walking the gangplank about now. Every morning, when I don't have an appointment or a place to be, I start my morning off with the dreaded "general upkeep" process. This includes gathering the mounds of laundry from the upstairs hamper, checking the boys’ rooms for errant dirty clothing, and washing up breakfast dishes. (Okay, and sometimes the previous evening's dinner dishes- I SAID I didn't run a tight ship!) Yesterday, when I was in my oldest son's room picking up the inevitable pair of discarded jeans which never seem to make it to the hamper, I noticed that his black Addidas leather tennis shoes were very scuffed. "Why, I think I'll do the boy a favor and shine these bad boys up!" I said just to myself, and grabbed the black shoe polish and sat down on his bean bag chair to do that. Only here's the problem with that scenario: I didn't actually know HOW to polish shoes. I am a woman remember? I probably have, say, 60 pairs of shoes of my own. I never NEED to polish shoes. It is rare that I wear the same pair of shoes two days in a row, and when I do, I don't drag my feet, kick rocks, run excessively or do any of the activities that probably scuffed up my son's shoes in the first place. And I know what you are thinking: "You could have read the directions on the back of the shoe polish." Yeah? But where's the fun in that? I am really not a direction reading kind of gal (just ask my mom, my husband, my sons), and so I decided to "wing it" like I always do. Opening the lid was no problem; that sucker just popped right off. I was on a roll, here, and I could already imagine how great those babies were going to look all blacked up and ready to go. I started to rub the dispenser on the shoe- but what do you know, nothing was coming out. "Maybe I just need to press a little harder," I mumbled to myself, and gave a little push, but still, although a tiny black smudge appeared on the shoe, it was not even close the glorious black I had envisioned. "Oh heck, I'm just going to give this sucker a squeeze." I said, and then I did it. This had not been an inspired idea. You know that footage from volcano eruptions, the kind they used to show kids on films strips when I was a kid? You know how that molten hot lava flows long and hard from the top of the volcano and then kind of gushes down the sides and dribbles everywhere on the countryside? Yeah. You've got it. Black shoe polish burst from he top of the dispenser, all over the shoe, down both of my bare legs, onto the floor in a huge, huge (I cannot stress enough HOW huge this was) puddle, and, as a final insult to me, all over my pretty dotted Swiss Victoria's Secret satin nightie I was wearing. (Listen. That IS appropriate shoe polishing attire. I always wear my nightgown to do my morning cleaning and household chores.) I just stared for a really long time at the my newly blacked legs. I mean, my legs were BLACK! Not just speckled black, not streaked with black, not even striped with black- my legs were literally pitch black, raven wing dark. OH NO! And guess what else- bad news for me, because I just remembered about that time that I AM THE MOM around this joint, and somehow, some way, I was going to have clean this big stinkin' mess up! I looked down at the pale beige carpet at the three foot wide black circle of shoe polish that had dripped off my legs and was soaking into the carpet quickly. And so I did what only seemed right. I finished polishing the shoes. I mean, if I was going to dye my legs black, stain the carpet beyond recognition, and ruin my cute nightie, I might as well have those shoes polished up, right? And besides, that would have wasted a whole lot of polish for nothing, so I just sat there in my little black puddle and shined those boys up. They were a feast for the eyes, let me tell you, but the aftermath cleanup from my polishing is still ongoing. I
think I need one of those teams that they put together when the oil
tankers spill in the ocean to come to my son's room to help me finish
this horrible job. 'Cause, no matter what those folks at Oxyclean tell
you, that product is not a match for a three-foot wide circle of shoe
polish soaked into pale carpeting. And frankly, I lack the fortitude and
caring that is required to really clean up a mess of this magnitude. But
I'll keep working at it. Kind of. Because I happen to know the captain
of this ship, and she is kind of a lax kind of gal. Thank goodness.
Because I really don't like cleaning up big giant messes. And walking
the gangplank actually doesn't sound that appealing to me.
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