Keeping up appearances

The first week of October was still early enough in the pre-school year that I held onto my fantasy of keeping up appearances. I say "fantasy," because our son, age 5, is active, strong-willed and sometimes defiant, a combination that keeps life interesting.

The school year had gotten off to a great start though. His teacher had called his efforts "awesome" and, after a particularly good day, had described him as "compassionate."  Plus she told me that she didn't even consider him one of her "busy guys." I did spend some time pondering the school vs. home duality of this child's personality but nearly busted with pride all the same. I even began to think I might stay off the crazy-parent radar screen for a little while longer.

Then came the second rollerskating party of the school year.

The venue, Vancouver's Golden Skate, was fabulous with its spacious hardwood floor and glittery mirrored disco ball hanging from the ceiling's center. It reminded me of Fargo's Skateland, where as a kid I attended those slightly dangerous-feeling skating parties, rolling with crowds of strangers under multi-colored mood lights to the boozy music of Blondie and the Bee Gees. Even Golden Skate's skates, those regulation fawn-colored boots with round orange brakes at the toe, were identical to the ones we wore clattering around Skateland's floor, doing the hokey-pokey and limbo, cracking the whip and shooting the duck.

Of course my Skateland forays were 30 years ago, and at the first Golden Skate party I noticed that some of the parents were wearing Rollerblades. How smart! The inline wheels are much easier to navigate and make the quick turns that are oh-so-necessary with 40-odd pre-schoolers unpredictably grabbing at your hands, then kneecaps, then ankles as they spill repeatedly and unpredictably to the floor. I had intended to consign my vintage 1995 Rollerblades last year but had never quite gotten around to it. How lucky!

The morning of the second skate party had started out rough at home, but after some cajoling and strong-arming I got my son out the door and into the car. I dashed into the man-cave (a.k.a. the shop), grabbed the bag that contained my inline skates off the nail on which it had been hanging, set it in the car and away we went.

At the rink, I got my son's and his buddy Louis's skates laced up and sent them on their knock-kneed way before sitting down myself to pull out my beautiful cornflower-blue Rollerblades. Ah, the memories. I had purchased them in Minneapolis on a trip home from Japan, where I had been teaching English in a rural area. When I returned to Japan, I strapped on those bad girls and whizzed down the rough country roads, startling bent-backed old women working in the rice paddies and making my students giggle and cover their mouths. Somehow my blades made me feel rebellious.

Now at Golden Skate I would don them once again and glide about this rink, confident and sure-footed. I eased my foot into the right skate. It felt good, a bit smaller than I remembered, but not problematically so. I couldn't wait to get on the floor. Then I pulled the left skate out of the bag. As I tipped it toward my waiting foot, a terrible thing happened. Little green pellets began to spill and skitter across the hardwood floor and onto the carpet of the shoe-changing area. I froze. It was d-CON -- mouse poison! My boot was full of it.

I hastily worked to isolate my quickly spreading mess while detouring meandering pre-schoolers, their shocked parents and drooling younger siblings around it. I called out for a broom and dustpan, and the grandpa-aged man managing the rink approached and silently began to sweep as I picked up errant pellets and apologized over and over. He never said a word. I overheard one mom explaining quietly to another (who I imagine then explained to another and another), "She brought her own skates, and they had d-CON in them!"

It was not until much later that it occurred to me that the other mothers watching my unfolding debacle might have had no experience with mouse-fighting. They had most likely not endured anything like the event my family knows as the Mousecapade of 2008, when we were slammed by an infestation in our home and I threatened to wave the white flag and abandon ship altogether.

That was when we threw away the live traps (what a joke) and brought in the death traps and d-CON. That was when we learned that mice prefer chocolate to peanut butter. That was when we learned not only that mice have no proper sense of boundaries but that they like to stash yummies in shoes.

We had found cat food kibbles stuffed into a shoe in our son's closet and then, later, d-CON stashed in my Sorel boot in the man-cave. In both cases, the shoes were at floor level. It had never occurred to me that a mouse would store provisions in a skate in a hanging bag.

It also had never occurred to me that this school year I would single-handedly establish my position on the crazy-parent radar screen while my son innocently clomped around a hardwood floor, learning how to skate.