There is so much bad stuff that would happen if I just let it. And letting it happen is easy, so easy, easy enough that I'm usually doing just that before I realise it and three or four things have already trundled off on their merry, very bad way. For example:
This morning my hands were malfunctioning in a very basic way and I dropped a knife, a napkin, and a glass of milk. The milk went everywhere- on the seat, on the floor, on the bills that were sitting there minding their own business and exuding that adult, responsible aura that unmailed payments exude. I was frustrated and a little teeny bit mad at myself, so I let the nanobots that I got for my husband's birthday out of the plastic baggie to clean up the mess. (I know what you're saying to yourself: "Christ, Jenn's gifts suck" and "that was just awful that she opened it before he got home from his business trip, she can't wait eight days? Who does that?" and "Next X-mas remind me to suggest to Jenn that we never exchange gifts again, ok?" These questions are all right and just, but read me out.) I figured that the nanobots were engineered to clean things- or that they should be- and so would learn from the experience and be the best nanobots that ever a wife bought for her husband on eBay. (If you want to get some of these fantastic nanobots for yourself- which I wouldn't if I were you- just search "insane stuff that shouldn't be for sale on eBay" at the website.) Ok, so- barely perceptible robot cleaners, milk spill- piece of cake, right?
I'll tell you what's not a piece of cake: getting the nanobots to stop making so much noise that they wake the whole building. Milk is like grain alcohol to nanobots- something the general public does not know, and a good explanation for why nanobots aren't sold at Target. For such a bunch of bitty pieces of advanced machinery, the bots can really raise a ruckus- and none of it is very palatable at 7:30 in the morning (I'm a stickler for those sorts of etiquette rules- things like "One must begin using the silverware at one's place setting from the outside in" and "One should never bring up donkey-on-person sexual positioning before noon." Those nanobots are raunchy.) So there I was, shushing a bunch of nit-sized cleaner nanobots who'd drunk all of the spilled milk and were moving en masse to the kitchen in search of more milk and/or some goalposts to pull down, when my phone rings. It's my daughter's school.
When the school calls this early, you know that something's up and you get nervous. It's a Pavlovian reaction that you were trained to do while you were sleeping off the labor and delivery of your future school-aged child, it seems. "Yes? HithisisJenniferwhatistheproblem?" I said, cool as a super-heated cucumber. "Hi this is Blah Blah School, everything's fine." The personnel are trained to say that, no matter what they're calling about, to counter-act your instinctive jittering. "It's just that we noticed you sent your daughter to school today without any clothes on."
I was silent for a time, because what else can you do? Deny your child's nakedness? "No I didn't" I said in as helpful a manner as I could. But alas, I had: they would have just given her clothes from their lost-and-found box, making do with the six winter hats, three mismatched gloves, one XXXL Ole Miss sweatshirt, and one tiny pink sequined purse, BUT she'd caught her left butt-cheek in the pencil sharpener and wouldn't leave the staff bathroom. "There are some staff members here who really need to use that washroom," the school person's voice said. "It's our one private bathroom, and students aren't allowed in there."
So I have to bring some clothes to my girl at school. There is some confusion about whether or not she gets to come home or if she'll be made to put on her clothes and then return to class. I'm deeply, deeply embarrassed by the fact that I'd let her leave the house naked, so intent on freeing the nanobots to clean up after me that I didn't notice my daughter's sleepwalking self hoist her backpack onto bare shoulders before I let her out the door, kissing the air around her head in a fog of cluelessness. It had been far too easy.
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