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Monday, May 6, 2013

A Stitch in Time.

                             

I woke up this morning and checked Party Boy’s room to make sure he’d arrived home safely. The room was uninhabited, forsaken, desolate. Hmmmm, I mused, Padraic must have done what I distinctly told him not to. That’s unusual. (Deep sarcasm)

“But Mum,” he whined yesterday, “I need the money to pay off my traffic fine.”

He’d procured a one-off job cleaning up after the Groovin the Moo music festival cleaning up from 11:00 pm until 6:00 am; but he had school the next morning.

“Padraic!” I pointlessly argued. “You’re already on an attendance contract at school after all your wagging episodes last year. You'll be too exhausted to go to school.”

“Okay Mum, I won’t do it then,” he replied a tad too compliantly for my liking.

Leaving for work, I asked Scotto to text me as soon as Padraic came home. If he finished working at 6:00 am he should definitely be home by the time Scotto left for work. I waited and waited but there was no text from Scotto. 

Over the course of the day I must have called Padraic’s phone at least twenty times to no avail. Skipping a visit to the shops after work I optimistically hoped I'd find him slumped all over the lounge when I walked in the door. 

There are no shoes strewn over the front step, I thought worriedly. There were no tell-tale signs of teenage sloth like dirty plates in the kitchen either. I could hear the TV blaring in the lounge and a sense of relief settled in my bowels. He’s home! 

No… it was twenty year old Hagar languishing hedonistically on the sofa eating corn chips.

“Have you seen your brother?” I spluttered.

“Who?”

“Your brother! Padraic! You know that kid who has lived in the bedroom next to yours for the last seventeen years!” My panic was rising.

“Nup,” came the laconic response.

Like Sherlock Holmes I tracked down his mate Jarred’s Mother’s nephew in the phone book. After a considerable amount of backwards and forwards telecommunication, I was finally armed with his mate, Jarrod’s phone number. I dialled with shaking hands.

“I haven’t seen him since last night sorry. He asked me if I wanted to work with him last night but Mum said I wasn’t allowed to cos it’s a school night.”

That’d be bloody right. Other people’s kids do as they’re asked…

As a last resort I raced up to his room in search of more phone numbers. And who did I find but Little Lord Fauntleroy, fast asleep in his dingy bedroom, tangled in the sheets like a rat amongst the straw.

I remember doing the same thing to my parents.

“Just popping up to the shop. See you in twenty minutes!” a nineteen year old Pinky chirped to her Mum and Dad at ten o’clock one evening. Ditsy Pinky became distracted by a shiny light, called in to a friend’s place and spontaneously decided to spend the night.

Poor Dad woke up at midnight and in a highly distressed state drove around the city desperately searching out his daughter. He arrived home at 2:00 am after spotting my car safely parked in my friend’s driveway.

So I suppose my friends, that the moral of the story is this;

A mother of eight stayed up late stitching up the fly of her husband’s pyjamas… a stitch in time saves nine.

You thought I was going to say, “You reap what you sow” didn’t you?

Well... sometimes I wish I'd paid more attention to the sewing component in Domestic Science at school!