Thanks, Mom, For Not Ever Killing Us-- Not Even Once!

Sometimes it's more than I can bear; the utter ridiculousness of their sibling rivalry may just be what lands me in the loony bin someday.  (Probably sooner than later.)  I'm talking about Ruby Jane and LM, of course.  

Take, for example, the argument I just moderated in the car this morning on the way to school.  It was about, now brace yourselves for the profundity of this, the slug bug game.  You've all played it, right?  You see a VW beetle and you hit the ceiling of the car and yell, "slug bug!".  It's an extremely intelligent way to pass the time while going from point A to point B.  

I'll be quite honest, Ruby Jane is the far superior player between the two.  She has her eyes peeled from the moment she buckles her seatbelt until the moment she unbuckles it.  LM, on the other hand, gets easily distracted....  (Look at the birdies!)  So Ruby Jane is racking up quite an impressive collection of "slug bugs" (they keep a running tally-- or, more accurately, Ruby Jane does).  This does not escape LM's notice, however, and quite frankly he gets upset with the disparity.  Here, I'll let you in on what I had to endure after Ruby Jane saw two slug bugs parked right next to each other and called them both-- after which the conversation went a little something like this:

LM: "I get one of your slug bugs!"

Ruby Jane: "No you don't."

LM: "Ahhhhhhhhhhhaaaa!"

Ruby: "Well, you didn't see them in time!  You have to look harder!"

LM: "Ahhhhhhhhhhhaaaa!"

Me: "Ruby, could you share one of your slug bugs?"

Ruby: "No."

LM: "Ahhhhhhhhhhhaaaa!"

Ruby: (spotting another and hitting the ceiling) "Slug bug again!"

LM: "Ahhhhhhhhhhhaaaa!"

Me: "Ruby Jane, it would be really kind if you let him have a slug bug."

Ruby: "But that's not fair."

LM: "I hate this game!"

Ruby: "Oh, alright, you can have one slug bug."

LM: "Okay, I get the blue one."

Ruby: "No, I get the blue one!  You can have the black one."

LM: "I don't want the black one!  I want the blue one!"

Ruby: "The blue one's mine!"

LM: "Ahhhhhhhhhhhaaaa!"

If it's getting tiresome just reading the dialogue, imagine what it was like actually having to live through it.  Finally, I realized I'd let this go on far too long, and with my supreme motherly talents I ended it.

Me: "ENOUGH!  We're not ever going to play the stupid slug bug game EVER AGAIN!  DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?  NOT EVER!"

They were quiet.  But only for about, oh, two seconds.  Then:

Ruby Jane: "Let's play it with trucks instead."

LM: "Okay!"

Ruby: (smack) "Red truck!"  (smack) "Blue truck!"  (smack) "Red truck!" 

LM: "Ahhhhhhhhhhhaaaa!"

 

I seriously considered literally swerving us into one of those passing trucks, but I'm not quite that inept.  Besides, by that point we were practically at Ruby's school and relief was in sight.

It's times like these that I appreciate my own mother and what she probably went through while raising me and my sisters.  Yikes, it must have been even worse for her....  But, she managed to survive, sanity intact even.  (Unless she's on some sort of medication now that I don't know about-- which is quite possible given that she raised three girls.)  But, the important thing is: I survived childhood-- meaning my mom didn't kill me.  And that...that gives me hope.