PICKING UP ELI

One of our neighbors, Eli's daddy called me, asking if I would look up a different neighbor's phone number for him. So, maybe all their phone books got left out in the rain or something, I gave it to him and he hung up. Pretty soon he called back. Would I go to Eli's preschool and pick up Eli? Eli's daddy wasn't home--therefore the mystery of having no one's phone number solved--and his wife was not home either.

If he only knew what I looked like. I just dyed my hair so at least I no longer look like I belong to the skunk family but my hair was wet and sticking up like a wet and furry animal that went through a knot hole, backwards.

I have no make-up on.

I just ate five almonds so I have nut fragments in my teeth. If there is anything that bugs me about old people--not that I'm old, but you know I'm always looking to the future for what I should or shouldn't do when I get there. So, nut fragments, blurry eyeglasses and crusty salt remnants under their eyes are what I see sometimes on old people. I had one symptom out of three.

I went to the preschool and who should be there but the woman Eli's daddy tried to call in the first place. She was picking up her preschooler and Eli.

"My mom's stuck," Eli said to nobody in particular.

"Are you picking up Eli?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, batting her big blue eyes that had just the right amount of eyeliner and mascara. "His mom called from Wal-Mart and asked me to. She called my cell phone just as I was driving in." She looked like she didn't have make-up on but had been digitally enhanced by someone who makes Oprah look age 25 on the covers of her magazine. She is also blond, the kind of blond that is sun bleached but probably came from expensive salon treatments, and it's thick and perfectly curled. And long. She must drive her husband wild with her digitally enhanced looks and that long lustrous hair. I noticed she is pregnant, child number five. Yup, she drives him wild.

"Oh, I said. Eli's daddy asked me to pick him up too."

"Oh," she said, looking at my wild-man-of-Borneo hair. "That was so nice of you," Which translated into, "And you came out looking like THAT?"

"My mom's stuck," Eli said.

Then the gorgeous neighbor smiled. I saw one of those diamond-facet-sparkling-rays-of-light coming off her perfectly white teeth. I promise, I did.

I smiled back, forgetting about the nut fragments until I saw her eyes widening. I could see the whites all around her pupils. "Alrighty, then.... I'll just take Eli home with me." Rather than send him home with you, who may have escaped from "the home."

"My Mom's stuck." Eli said to everyone as he left with the perfect neighbor.

I slunk home. I'm stuck too, I thought. And not at Wal-Mart.