A Short Story

Part one:
The whole thing took less than 30 seconds. I was driving in my mini-van awesomeness on Friday when the sun started to get a bit bright. I reached into the diaper bag for my sunglasses and put them on. All the time, I was ever the conscientious driver and mostly kept my eyes on the road. I'm honestly not sure if I FELT the substance or SAW the substance first. Ew. There was some sort of blob beginning to drip from my eyebrow and my vision was about to be compromised. Of course I temporarily forgot my attempts at safe driving and crossed my eyes up to the brow in question. I flung my glasses off in disgust, reached up to touch my eyebrow and felt something wet and sticky. It reminded me of the wax my favorite Vietnamese gal uses to make these same brows beautiful and non-Sasquatch-like. EXCEPT it had an odor. No...it was a combination of odors. You know when you see an actor in a movie and you KNOW you've seen them before, and you just cannot for the life of you figure out where? That's precisely how I felt when I first got a whiff of the odor of this nasty substance--but only for about 3 seconds. "What is tha...?" Oh no. I grabbed my glasses back from where they had been flung, abandoning all hope of being a good driver, and inspected them. Sure enough: the inside top of the left lense was coated in this substance. My confusion vanished immediately as I smiled with a combination of disgust and satisfaction at solving the 30-second mystery.

Part 2:
On Wednesday (2 days earlier), after Sydney's morning nap, we headed to good ol' Mickey D's drive-through. Of course we got the requisite Happy Meal, this time with chicken nuggets. We took our food to our lovely indoor play park and sat down at the picnic bench to eat. No surprise, Carson was so anxious to play that he ate only 2 nuggest and 2 apple slices and took off to the bounce house. I decided to organize the finger-food mess, and I put the nuggets, the apple slices and the caramel dipping sauce and the BBQ dipping sauce in the little cardboard nugget box, positive that I would remember it was full of offensive material and would handle it delicately. (Ladies and gentlemen, we English teachers might call that last sentence FORESHADOWING.) Again, no surprise, Carson tired out and melted down before he wanted to eat, so in our rush to leave, I threw the flimsy cardboard box in the diaper bag, which was then thrown into the van. Later that day, I discovered with relief that the mess that had dripped from the box had primarily been isolated to one rogue onesie and a sunhat. Or so I thought.

Part 3:
(This conclusion is only necessary for those poor readers who need everything spelled out for them.) Yes, my sunglasses were also in the diaper bag and were not, as initially assumed, spared from the caramel/bbq sauce debacle. Also? Caramel/bbq odor does NOT disappear easily when accidentally used as a tiny facial. Despite what you may have heard to the contrary.

The End.