By Jennie Montgomery
Beach towels? Check.
Sunscreen? Check.
Common sense? Nowhere to be found.
My college senior and two of her friends were packing for their Spring Break trip to Miami. They seemed so organized and independent- it was clear they didn’t need my help at all.
Me: “Let me get you a bottle of aloe.
”Maddy: “Already have it packed.”
Me: “I’ll find the good beach chairs out in the garage.”
Marissa: “We’ve already found them, thanks.”
Shrugging my shoulders I left the room and then it hit me: “Maddy, don’t forget your Triple-A card! Does anybody have a credit card?”
Kelsey: “I have a credit card and we all have AAA. We’re good.”
Too bad their car didn’t hear that. Not only did they LOSE the keys their first day on the beach, they ran into some engine trouble days later and had to get it checked out. A quick call to AAA landed them inside a repair shop that looked like something straight out of—their words—Criminal Minds.
Maddy: “We were like, ‘Siri, this can’t be the place! It’s so sketch.’”
Marissa: “The mechanic was all, ‘Ladies, you’re welcome to wait in the office.’ It was just an old couch!”
Kelsey: “And the next thing I knew, someone was tapping my arm—‘Uh, miss…’”
Maddy: “We had fallen asleep—right there in the office! We were leaning all over each other—probably drooling, too! It was so embarrassing.”
The reality was a nice mechanic fixed their car and sent them back on the road in a reliable ride.
But the Mama Drama part of me heard this: Three college girls, fast asleep in an unfamiliar place with a broken down car, nothing but Siri between them and the outside world…
Sometimes it’s the little things we have to appreciate, like hearing the story AFTER your kid has survived a potential Lifetime movie plot.
This article appears in the May – June 2016 issue of Augusta Family Magazine.
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