The Kevin Challenge
I’m putting up my Christmas decorations this weekend because I need to fully release the Holly Jolly upon this entire situation called 2019. Who am I kidding. My autumnal tree has already been up for over a month and I showed incredible restraint to not roll out the green and red tubs on November 1st.
As you can tell from my last blog post, we’ve had a LOT of losses this year and my heart needs a little Christmas more than ever.
For the first time, I’m going to ask you to participate in a little festive fun with me. I’m going to call it “The Kevin Challenge.” I’m the actual worst at participating in online funnery, so I completely understand if you just want to sit back and watch. IRL, I loooove playing games, especially at the holidays, so if you can play along, please do. It will be fun. And a little scary.
My challenge is going to be based on one of the best moments in film history, played by the glorious Catherine O’Hara, in the one of the best films ever, Home Alone, where Kevin’s mom realizes the “thing” she forgot back in Chicago was not the passports, turning off the coffee maker or closing the garage door, but, in fact, her 8-year-old son.
In her own words, she despairs, “What kind of mother am I?” as she continues on her transatlantic flight to Paris.
For those of you with 2 or 3 children, this is the moment in my post where I’m going to release you to take a hard pass from going any further with me for the next few moments. No hard feelings. There’s just no reason to put you through the ugly truth of what occasionally happens in big families.
For the record, I’m zero percent sorry we had a big family, and I genuinely savor all the glorious messy that came with it. Having been raised in a small, tidy and reasonable number children in my all-girl family, I was wholly unprepared for the Big White Conversion Van Full of Five Children life, but I loved every sticky minute of it. Honestly. We were living our best life.
This is how we play. I’ll tell you my “Kevin!” story and you can safely, with no judgey backlash, assuming your child survived relatively unscathed, confess yours.
The year was 2002 and our 5 precious younglings ranged in ages 13 down to 2. With a brand new shiny campus a mere two blocks from our home, our church was literally our home away from home.
Our Sunday custom was to meet in our jam-packed, bustling lobby after service and gather all the kids in 3 cars (my husband’s, mine and my parents) and head to our Sunday lunch destination: Furr’s Cafeteria. Why 3 cars you ask? Because the mama of this operation arrived 2-3 hours before the rest of the family to serve with a few dozen of her closest and most fabulous musical friends, and the papa arrived later with the van jam packed with all the niños.
As we arrived at the lunch destination, I quickly scanned an immediate Terminator-style inventory with my eyes, and asked, “Where’s Zach?” Without waiting for an answer from the rest of the adults, their faces told the story of their certainty that the child was in one of the other cars.
Zach was 4 years old. Four. Years. Old.
The 8-minute drive back to church ended up being the longest 3-minute drive of my life, only to find zero people in the lobby. Zero people in his Sunday School class. No adult standing with our son on the sidewalk as I imagined, waiting with him for his negligent parents to arrive.
With legs that could barely move, I gathered them up beneath me and drove home, hoping upon hope a friend drove him home and, again, would be waiting with him for his negligent parents to arrive.
While the above was unfolding, the scrappy four year old child WALKED home. By. Him. Self. Once he arrived home, he walked around the outside of our house calling our names. After that total horror scene died down, he crawled to a lower level bathroom window he suspected would slide open and he Let, Him. Self. In. The. House. Where he waited alone for his negligent parents to arrive.
Oh man. That was way harder to type than I thought, so this game is NOT for the faint of heart. Now it’s your turn.