Hitting The Wall

As a general rule, coming home from work is a good thing. After all, you get to relax and forget about the scratch and claw world of paying the bills. And that would apply to my house except for one thing - The Wall Of Chaos.

The Wall is kind of hard to describe. It's the simultaneous combination of ear splitting squeals, relentless demands, endless bickering, ravenous hunger, pent-up restlessness, and competitive attention seeking exploding from my three children the second I walk in the door. It's like getting flattened by an acoustic tidal wave.

Last Monday was a classic encounter with the Wall. When I got home, I sat in the car mustering my courage. After about thirty minutes, my wife's face appeared in the kitchen window. I smiled and pretended that I had just pulled up and was gathering my stuff to come inside.

Looking at her, I tried to gauge the size of the Wall. Her hair wasn't on fire and none of her veins were popping out of her head. On the other hand, I couldn't really tell if her hands were shaking or whether her clothes were smeared with Wall of Chaos debris from the kids' regular afternoon pillaging of the pantry and refrigerator.

As I looked, she waved for me to come inside. That's when I noticed she was on the phone. That meant that the kids were either comatose in front of the TV or that the Wall of Chaos was so monstrous that she was reserving a room at the Holiday Inn. At any rate, I nodded and waved again, trying to buy more time.

Suddenly, she disappeared from the window. Either the zombie children had come back from the dead or the Wall of Chaos had morphed into the Howls of the Hungry. Or worse, the Wall was so insufferable that she was coming to get me so that I could enjoy parenthood, too.

In a panic, I looked around, grabbed the truck Owner's Manual, and quickly assumed a dead serious look just as she tapped on my window. Rather than open the door of my vehicle and jeopardize any chance of escape, I cracked my window and lovingly said, "Hey."

The back door to house was open and I was able to hear what sounded like a pack of wild hyenas engaged in a frenzied battle over the last Ritz Cracker on the planet. I braced myself as she spoke, "Are you coming in?"

She was clearly miffed at herself for getting home first. Even so, I stalled, "Can't. Some kind of problem with my truck. I'm looking in the manual now." I held up the manual like a shield of proof.

"How long will you be?," she called out over the din.

"Not long," I lied, knowing that within another twenty minutes the house would be hopelessly wrecked and the pack of hyenas would be licking their wounds and regrouping. I felt pretty good about my strategic position so I rolled the window down a little further.

"Is it something bad?," she asked.

"Don't know," I said, flipping pages solemnly.

"Oh," she frowned.

Just at that moment, the hyenas went nuclear - I figured they were fighting over the crumbs by then. Lydia looked back at the house and then back at me in a pitiful way. I almost felt sorry for her, but I also knew that she understood the rules of game.

That's when she smiled and said, "Well, I just came out to tell you that I have to go to a meeting. I won't be long." She called out as she got in her car, "Oh yeah, you'll have to feed them."

I looked through the entire Owner's Manual without ever finding anything wrong with my truck. So finally I did what I usually do - I pulled out the spare pack of Ritz Crackers I keep in my backpack, tossed it in the door ahead of me, waited a minute or two, and then hit the Wall.

Never mind about my nose, the scab will be gone by the time you read this.