Don’t Tell Your Mother…

I had my daughter Chyna’s cousin Kia over for the weekend. It was months after Mike’s passing and I was still trying to do all the things Mike did with the kids. Mike and Chyna were true outdoors-man (girl). They fished, they explored the woods, they swam and built snow forts, they also loved 4 wheeling. This one weekend while her cousin was visiting I decided I was going to take them 4 wheeling. I gathered the snow pants, hats, gloves, boots and coats. I grabbed two helmets because that’s all we had and put them on the kids. They were bundled up tightly. I didn’t have a helmet but I wasn’t too worried I planned on driving carefully and slow.

As we were heading on the trail my neighbor and his son had just gotten back from their 4 wheeling adventure, coming from the same path we were going on. We waived and off we went.

Things were going good, the kids were laughing and enjoying it. I’d speed up then slow down and speed up again and slow down, I did this repeatedly. We came to a stream of water. The water came about half way up your calf in terms of how deep it was. There was a man made log bridge to cross the stream. I stopped at the base of the bridge, it was a sheet of ice. Chyna said “I don’t think we should cross, it doesn’t look safe”, I said “oh girl stop your foolishness” her cousin was like “yeah let’s do it, let’s cross the bridge” so I put my foot on the gas and just like that we started across the log bridge and as the back wheels spun out we flipped the 4 wheeler off the bridge, down about 6 feet with all 3 of us on it and into the water below. This was in cold ass winter conditions. We hit the water. We were surrounded by rocks. I jumped up and pulled each girl up out of the water at the same time, one in each hand and lifted them onto a rock to their feet. I quickly started to freak out, were they ok, had they broken anything, were they bleeding? They were soaked from head to toe on the outside but dry on the inside. This was a blessing. I had no snow pants on so my jeans were soaked but truth be told, I couldn’t feel a damn bit of that cold.

“Girls, are you ok?” “yes” they said. “are you sure?” “yes they agreed” “mom, I told you it didn’t look safe” Chyna said. I politely asked her, like any other loving mother would have… “Chyna are you looking for a punch in your eyeball?” (something I always say to the kids when they try to be a smart ass,kind of a joke but kind of mean it) Ok, what’s next?

I tried to tip the 4 wheeler up right but I wasn’t strong enough and the girls looked exhausted from the slip and fall accident. I grabbed my phone and called my neighbor Randy. He could hear me but I couldn’t hear him. I hung up not knowing he could hear me and told the girls “come on we got to walk back to the house to get help”. We started down the trail and now my legs are getting real cold so I start telling the girls “come on walk faster I’m going to die of frost bite if we don’t get home fast” they hurried along as best they could, I could here them chatting, Kia saying “Chyna, mommy is going to be so mad when she finds out we crashed” I yelled back “we didn’t crash we slipped off the bridge” and then my neighbor’s truck appears out of nowhere. He knew I was in trouble when I called and he immediately came to find us. We hopped into his truck and headed back to where the 4 wheeler was at. Believe it or not, him and his 8 year old son managed to get the 4 wheeler out of the water and back to my house. I was so grateful for my neighbor this day.

I get the girls into the house and Kia says “ooooooh cousin Sherry Anne, mommy is going to be some mad when she finds out you got us in a 4 wheeling accident” well for fuck sakes , she was right. Then she says “well I have to call mommy and tell her” and I had to think quick because if she called her mother she would make me bring her home and I’d never have her precious cargo over the house again…I just knew it because her mom was super duper over protective. So I said “well you know what, no sense worrying your mom about this, nobody got hurt I’ll just tell her when I take you home” Kia paused then said “ok” I was like…” yeah honestly we don’t have to tell your mother, I mean you’re not hurt right?” She said she wasn’t hurt but wasn’t convinced it was a good idea not to tell her mother. I had easily convinced her not to call her mother but when I got her home, I just knew she was going to tell on me.

I took her home the next day. As we were driving Kia said “so are you going to tell mommy what happened?” Truth be told I was hoping she would forget but she didn’t FFS. I was all cheery with my response “Of course I am, it wasn’t nothing big, it was an adventure she’ll be fine with it” and she replied “ummm I think she’s going to be mad” I said “naw she will be fine.” Deep down inside I was planning how I was going to downplay this accident.

We got to her house and I said nonchalantly “oh we had a great weekend didn’t we Kia?” She was like “yep, I had fun, we even crashed the 4 wheeler.” I knew she was going to tell on me, damn kids can’t lie for shit when it’s a lie to protect an adult, geez. I followed up with “we had a little mishap with the 4 wheeler and it slipped off the ledge into the stream, just the back end, nothing major” She said with concern “what! why didn’t you call me? was everyone alright? OMG I can’t believe you didn’t call me” I told her that it wasn’t anything really and I tried to make a joke about it. Kia started to describe what had happened and I quickly exited the building with an “ok, gotta go…love yas, let’s do it again some time”

Kia has never spent another night at my house ever again.

#sherryannecrowe