Sometimes in life you live out a story you’re sure you will never be able to forget.
For Christmas, all my husband, Justin, and son-in-law, Aaron, wanted were tattoo gift certificates.
I thought those would be easy enough gifts, and, thankfully, ones I wouldn’t have to wrap.
Being the cool wife and mother-in-law that I am,
I told my daughter, Alena, I would get this for them if she would go with me to the tattoo shop she likes and help me with it all.
So, one night, just before Christmas, we planned a last-minute shopping outing that would include picking up the gift certificates from the tattoo shop.
We shopped until it was well past dark,
and finally headed to the tattoo parlor around 8:00.
What Alena had neglected to tell me all along, however, was that the particular shop with the artist she prefers is in one of the very worst parts of town:
Across the street from the gospel mission,
right next to a huge homeless encampment, needles strewn all around.
There were no street lights at all as she pulled to park in the only place we could park by it:
A pitch black alleyway, far enough from the shop that it now just looked like a tiny dot.
Now, here is where I must tell you that earlier that morning after my shower,
I had pulled on a pair of my very old underwear from before my recent 40 pound weight loss, because we were low on clean laundry that day.
You mothers know the kind – threadbare, no elastic left much at all.
It was a moment I would come to regret.
I thought nothing of this at first,
minor annoyance,
but as we got out of the car then in the dark,
I said to her, “If we get murdered right before Christmas I’m going to be mad.
I’ve put in too much work to die today,” and she said the fateful words,
“It’s fine. We‘ll just run from and back to the car.”
Narrator’s voice: “This was easy for her to say.”
So there we were, running a block by the gospel mission in the total dark.
I made note of the parked and graffitied unmarked refrigeration truck, and hoped that would not be where our bodies ended up.
I’ve watched all the murder shows.
I know about refrigeration trucks.
We made it, though, without being shot or grabbed up onto the dark tattoo shop porch, but as we did, those big underwear decided that they could stay up no more.
As I had run they had started to fall down inside of my pants,
and by the time we’d reached the shop they had completely given up.
A sign on the door said to ring the bell and someone would come, so we rung it and while we stood there, and trying not to laugh I huffed,
“Hey, Alena, give me your hand.”
She held it out, looking confused, and I took hold and ran her fingers along just above my right knee. Her eyes narrowed, puzzled.
“What you’re feeling is my underwear,”
I said, laughing at my big reveal.
“They have completely fallen off of me.”
The next part I’ll tell you is that during this scene, we didn’t realize that the tattoo guy had come to the door, and was watching and listening from behind the glass, surveying us out on the porch.
He’d watched the entire thing.
I’m surprised he unlocked the door.
He did bring us inside, though, and he did our transaction so quickly I never even had a chance to readjust myself.
I figured he was a tattoo artist.
Obviously he’d seen way worse things.
This was just a young woman and her mother, panting, with what looked like a leg goiter.
Nothing looks too threatening when it’s waddling.
Certificates in hand we exited, and prepared to run back to the car again,
only I wasn’t able to very well because of how my legs were still partially bound inside my pants.
I wouldn’t be surprised if murderers HAD seen us from the start and rejected us based on how we ran from and back to where we’d parked.
We had nearly reached the car again when I heard Alena hiss,
“Uh. There’s a big bald guy standing over there on that porch and he’s staring right at us.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” I said,
but, UPDATE: It wasn’t fine,
because that big bald guy who was just a shadow headed right for us, and called out in a deep, scary voice that echoed in the dark,
“How are you tonight, Ladies? Can I talk to you for a sec?”
My life flashed before my eyes.
How would THIS appear on the news?
“Woman and daughter found murdered while trying to get tattoos.
Mystery surrounds giant saggy undergarments.”
Terrified, we tried to ignore his calls, and just get into the car.
Alena made it.
I actually think she got in and immediately re-locked the car.
Now I was with him alone in the murderous dark.
I remember looking at her sitting there, safe behind the glass, and how I thought,
“So this is how I die: Underwear falling down and in a gospel mission alley way, abandoned by my daughter.”
The shadow was moving closer now.
He got right up by the car.
It was so dark I couldn’t see his face.
I could see Alena’s, though, as she just winced and shied away the same way that she had one time as I’d driven and a huge spider appeared on my face from somewhere in the car.
When I asked later, after I’d nearly crashed, why she hadn’t helped me get it off,
she answered,
“I freeze, alright? I was born that way, I guess, which kind of makes it YOUR fault.”
My imagination has her just laying her seat way down
as to not have to witness her mother being dragged off into the belly of that Tent Town.
The next part feels like a blur, the way being near your own death usually does.
I held my breath and waited for the angels to take me as that shadow closer approached,
but what it said surprised me when next it spoke.
“Hey, next time, if you park here, could you make sure no part of your car blocks my driveway?”
Wait…WHAT?
The relief I felt, I cannot tell you.
I nearly filled those giant shorts.
Alena flipped the lock to open once she realized the danger was no more.
I got in, legs shaking, and as we drove away, I shimmied my saggy underwear back into their place, and I chastised her for leaving me to die alone that way.
She just shrugged once again and gave her Alena Reasoning For Abandoning One’s Own Mother:
“Some people should NOT come towards you and tell you where to park.
Some things you just shouldn’t ever do if you are bald and in the dark.”
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
