This one time? At craft camp?

On Monday, my friend KWJ--the fabulous and newly-married--had a somewhat traumatic experience involving her very large dog innocently leaping up to follow some children and their mother out of a coffee shop. The mother was very understanding, thank goodness. Her story reminded me of something that happened to me last year, when I was still working at the craft store. It was one of those situations that could've been absolutely horrendous, but turned out blissfully okay thanks to someone else's common decency (and in this case, sense of humor).


The craft store had Saturday morning activities for kids, which I usually got to lead. One Saturday, this little boy, about 7, and his little sister came with their mom and grandmother. I didn't really know the kids...I think they'd only been in once before. Let's call the boy Max.

Max's glue bottle was clogged, so he asked me to fix it. I took it and was fiddling with it, and it just seemed slightly blocked. Usually, if given a good squeeze, that kind of glue bottle would just pop out the dried knot of glue and then work as normal. So I squeezed.

Can you see where this is going? Good, because I didn't.


I squeezed. Nothing happened. I squeezed a little more.

With no warning, the entire top of the glue bottle shot off and flew across the room. There was a smear of glue across the wall. There was glue on the floor. There was glue on the cabinet at the far end of the room.

There was also a long rope of glue ACROSS THE TOP OF MAX'S HEAD.

I'm going to steal one of my favorite MSN icons to illustrate the look on my face at that moment:




I burst out, "I am SO SORRY!"

Max, Max's mom, and Max's grandma sat there and sat there and sat there.

Time sort of stopped. I sort of died a little...

And then?

Then?


Max's mom started laughing her ass off.

I can only think of a few times in my life when I've ever been more relieved than I was in that moment. We had some really prissy ass people bring their kids to the Saturday activities over the year I worked there, people who would get absolutely nasty with me over stuff that was in no way my fault. There were also a lot of really cool parents. I'm grateful to this day that I squirted a cool mom's kid instead of a priss's kid. Because it was actually really not good, what I did...and even though it was a total accident, she would've been within her rights to be totally pissed off at me.

As he was leaving, Max said, "I can't believe I got squirted with glue!" but it was in one of those, "What a crazy story this will be!" kind of ways, not in an upset kind of way. I still think I adore Max a little for being such a good sport.

Also, I pledge to do my best to keep this story in mind when I have kids of my own, so I can be a cool mom and not freak out if something awkward but ultimately harmless and sort of hilarious happens to my kid. Pinkie swear.