Beep! Beep!
“No! She wouldn’t!” I said as I spun around.
The ‘she’ was my wife and it turns out she would.
Tracey had joined me at Little Athletics tonight after a meeting with a bride to be. The original plan was we’d exchange cars and she’d go home with Miss1, leaving me to follow on later when Master8 and Miss10 had finished. But shortly after Tracey arrived I’d agreed to keep Miss1 with me and let my wife go home alone.
After all, I’d already been walking around with Miss1 strapped into the stroller most the evening. I’d just let her out for a run around when Tracey had arrived…
…and my wife immediately took to chasing our youngest daughter around, making sure she didn’t run out in front of the cars which were both firmly parked and barely in the same time zone.
“She’s fine,” I eventually told my wife. “We’ve been doing great without you. Seriously, not one incident. No ambulances. No band-aids. Nothing.”
Tracey and I are self-confessed helicopter parents, although we do vary as to our altitude and the companies we pilot for. I prefer to see myself as the SES crew member, flying in to help with injuries, whereas Tracey is piloting the police helicopter, playing a more preventative role.
And as inevitably happens when I’m in charge she was using her best police woman voice to give this SES dude a bit of a warning. Only this time she tried the wrong tack.
“Maybe I should take her home,” said Tracey. ‘If you’re not going to do this like I do this, maybe I can’t trust you to look after our daughter,’ was what she was really saying. It was also a ruse. With a wedding tomorrow she could be putting her time to better use and we both knew it.
I should have just agreed to lower my altitude, prepare my grappling hook and thank the nice officer for her advice. But where’s the fun in that?
“Great idea,” I told my wife instead, and marched my daughter and pram to the car.
“Um…,” said Tracey, following me over. “Actually, I really don’t mind if she stays with you.”
“No, no, you’re right. She should go home with you. Safer, don’t you know,” I said. I was laughing on the inside and she knew it.
“Okay,” sighed Tracey. “Well, I’ll just get my camera bag out of the other car.”
Which was the last thing she said to me before driving past and beeping a farewell thirty seconds later: grinning out the window in her best ‘so long, sucker’ manner.
Not that I minded. Miss1 and I went back to doing what we do best at Little Athletics – eating hot chips and playing chase.
And anyway, I got the last laugh when I arrived home an hour later and found my wife sitting on our balcony in the dark.
In her rush to leave she’d forgotten to take the house keys!
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Bruce Devereaux hangs out at his Big Family Little Income Facebook Page
 ”Raising a family on little more than laughs.”
