Fun With an Umbrella

I was driving the car, and Calfgrit7 was in the back seat, when all of a sudden I hear, “Fwup. Aayy!” I looked in my rearview mirror and saw this:

It had rained a couple days before this, so I had an umbrella on the floor behind the passenger seat. Calfgrit7 had reached down and picked it up to look at. He apparently pushed the button, and it burst open. The open umbrella filled the whole area behind the front seats, and even when I turned around, I couldn’t see him at all.

The opening startled him, but he got over it quickly. “How do I close it?” he asked. At the next stop light, I tried to help him. With the umbrella open, he couldn’t turn it around and I couldn’t reach around to get at the handle. “We’ll just have to wait till I can get somewhere to park,” I said, chuckling.

Within a minute, before I could get to a parking lot, he had figured out how to close it. But he couldn’t get it to latch and stay shut — it popped open again. We stopped at another traffic light, he closed it again, and I was able to reach back and help him latch it securely.

“Can I open it again?” he asked.

“No,” I said, chuckling again, “not in the car.”

He dropped the umbrella back to the floor and the incident was over. Just one of those little sitcom moments that life with children is full of.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com