Save yourself........RUN!

If you are anything like me, I suspect even if you don't want to be ..........you are, you have played out little scenarios in your head. What if we were carjacked.......what would I do? What if there were a fire, tornado, earthquake, hazardous waste spill.......what would I do? When I say what would I do, as a mother, I mean what would I do to protect the love nuggets. And yes I have thought of these things, so I felt fairly prepared in my head.

Yesterday my capability and devotion were truly put to the test.......and I may have failed. I'm not sure if was the age of the battery, the fact that I was holding a 'Presidency Meeting' in the parking lot while Madison touched every button and light, or the fact that as I waited for Ri and Jack in the school parking lot....I turned off the car and left the radio on so that Mads could sing to Alison Krause and work up a good cry. Either way, the battery was confirmed dead when I tried to leave school.

Jason was home, but he was working so hard I didn't want to interupt. I know how to jump the battery, I just had to find a willing participant. I called one of my best friends thinking she would still be in the same parkinglot that I was. She hurried over. Strangely her battery was under her back seat. We get all set up. We hook up the cables properly. I stretch the cables over to her car and find that I am just a hair short. So, not wanting to have live wires dangling we unhook and find her cables, which are longer. This time we hook up feeling like old pros! I get in her back seat and put on one pincer. Sparks! Flame! Combustion! I question the validity of this........I'm sure that shouldn't happen. Do I stop? NO! I put the other pincer on......more sparks. I back out of the car and stand next to mine. We see smoke coming from the batteries. My friend and I book it away from the car and scream for the only male within hearing distance to save us. We do not take the cables off. We do not remove the children from the car which is smoking. We flap our hands and squeal.

The 'Man' comes over. The cables are hot. There is still smoke. He takes the cables off of the batteries. Even the lines are hot. He throws them to the ground. We find out that both of our batteries are now dead.

Finally the 'Man' fixes everything while we try to make excuses for our little mistake. As the smoke clears we realize that we left the children in a car that we could have blown up. I have no shame in attaching the cables to the wrong charges.....whatever....I do have intense shame over leaving the kids sitting there staring out of the windshield while I flap my hands and remove MYSELF from harm. I know.......maybe there was no threat of them blowing sky high.....but still, I always thought I would save them first.