Blacklisted from the PTA by Lela Davidson Read Free Book Online Page A

thirty minutes cleaning the scorched batter overflow from the bottom of the oven and transferring partially cooked cake-like material into other pans of various shapes and sizes—none of which are tube pans.
10. You could serve the cake, which despite your monumental incompetence is actually delicious, resulting in rave reviews and requests that you “make this more often.”
    By the way, in case you’re wondering, a tube pan is the same as a Bundt pan and it has a far greater capacity than your average loaf pan. Again, who knew?

Car Trouble
     
    O
N A HOT SUMMER DAY , WHILE UNLOADING AN OBSCENE AMOUNT of groceries, I noticed a thick, pink substance on the garage floor. Lemonade? Maybe, but it appeared to be coming from inside the car. After I got my dairy and frozen goods out of the heat, I dipped my finger into the pink mess. It didn’t smell like anything and looked about as worrisome as IHOP syrup, which threatens only my thighs.
    About an hour later I had to run an urgent errand. If I didn’t get that double tall iced latte, someone was getting tied to a tree. Because my husband was out of town, I had another car to drive, one which did not have pink goo oozing out of it. However, I chose to drive the leaky car. It started and drove fine, at first. Soon the thermometer light came on. I tensed when it started to blink, even though I had no idea what that meant.
    If I designed cars, there would be a light that said, “Pull Over.” And if you didn’t immediately comply, another light would come on that said, “NOW!” If you still didn’t get the hint, the car would turn itself off. But my car doesn’t have this handy imaginary feature. Still, despite the warning light, my trip was uneventful. I finished my urgent errand and drove home.
    The next afternoon, after loading the car with five children, four snorkels, two masks, a box of crackers, forty-five fruit snacks, a gross of beach towels, and enough juice to flood a small country, it wouldn’t start. I tried again while the children whined, hot and cranky. Clearly this was another urgent situation so I did what I had to do. I switched cars and went to the pool.
    Then I had to make the call. “Do you want to hear the bad news?” I asked my husband. I told him about the harmless smelling gunk, the flashing red thermometer, and the nonstarting car. Luckily I married a man who remains calm in the face of mechanical trouble.
    “Was the car leaking while you were driving?”
    “No,” I said. “It was in the garage.”
    “And the light, when was that flashing?”
    Here’s where things started to turn against me. “Oh, well… . see…. I needed to go to the –”
    “You drove the car?”
    He is not so calm in the face of four-digit repair bills. I couldn’t feed his panic, but had to reassure him that there was nothing to worry about, just a task to accomplish. “What I need to know is whether I should have the car towed to the dealership or if you think we can put in some more of that pink stuff and drive it over.”
    My husband sighed from another state and I heard the hang of his head. “I hope you didn’t seize the engine.”
    “No.” I brushed it off. “I think it’s something else—something easy to fix.”
    Neither my husband nor the mechanic agreed that it was something easy to fix, but it didn’t matter. I may not be good with machines, but things always work out for me. For instance, my new car is very shiny.

Rise of My Machines
    W
E ARE DEPENDENT ON MACHINES : HAIR DRYER , COFFEE POT , television, thermostat, washer, dryer, Toyota, microwave. Too many to list. And sometimes— like after my family watches The Matrix for the 412th time—I wonder if we’re not getting a little too used to the electrical and mechanical conveniences, if we’re not getting too soft.
Foe example, yesterday the dishwasher wouldn’t start and my phone froze. That was just the beginning.
    After working for two hours, my computer angrily displayed the