The One Where Emzy DIDN'T Have to Clean the Whole House

For the first three years we lived in Colorado, Emzy and I rode the bus to school. But then she had to get all grown up and move on to middle school....the middle school that was just behind our house. Needless to say, she walked to and from school for sixth grade.

On the third day of the school year, Mom watched through the kitchen window as Emzy limped home. Upon her arrival, she asked Mom to wrap up her foot. But as soon as she started, Emzy screamed bloody murder and said she needed to go to the emergency room.

Now, Emzy might be overly dramatic at all times, but when she asks to go to the doctor, you know it's serious. For example, a few years ago she passed out in the shower while I was visiting her in Baltimore for spring break. When I insisted that she go to the emergency room she said, and I quote, "You don't know how to get there and I don't have to tell you." It wasn't until I threatened to call an ambulance that she couldn't afford that she became a little more cooperative.

But back to middle school. Mom had been cleaning the house and getting ready for some sort of Army Wife get-together the following day. And when Emzy asked to go to the ER, Mom (in what I'm sure she would say today is not one of her most shining motherly moments) said, "Emily Jane, if that foot isn't broken you are going to clean this whole house!" Might not be a shining Mommy moment, but I still think it's hilarious.

Because it turns out that her foot actually WAS broken. So Emzy didn't clean the house and spent the next few weeks awkwardly hopping along on crutches. But within the next 14 months Emzy managed to fall and get herself back on crutches twice more. Once while trying to catch a lizard a week before we left Colorado and again at the church Halloween party a few months after we moved to Alaska.

So you may not think this story is overly hilarious. Just wait. You see, the reason she fell in the first place on her way home from school as that she wasn't paying attention to where she was walking and stepped in a hole. Why wasn't she paying attention you ask? Because she was busy singing, "I like big butts and I cannot lie......."