OBSERVE:
You are about to embark on the horror of the SCHOOL RUN. Maisie has stolen your brand new fuchsia pink lipstick, scrawled all over her face, and freshly-ironed-never-before-worn-school-shirt. Sebastian is screaming about the fact that he just vomited in your handbag. Maisie’s twin, Mabel, is eating handfuls of Betty Crocker’s chocolate fudge cake frosting directly from the tub, and is currently wearing more of it on her face than is actually left in the aforementioned tub. How the fuck she got hold of the tub is quite the mystery, but here you are. You are seconds from a meltdown.
Do you:
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Join in with Sebastian’s screaming, and dump the contents of your bag on the floor, watching as congealed vomit oozes into your beautiful cream carpet, where you attempt to fish your mobile phone out from amongst the horror. You laugh maniacally as you realise that godawful TOWIE phone case has saved your phone from drowning in puke, and call your mum so you can sob down the phone incoherently.
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Say “FUCK IT!!” at high volume, announce school is cancelled, tell the kids they can play Minecraft all day, eat crisps for breakfast, lunch and dinner, whilst you hit the gin. This one is for the discerning parent that has gone waaaaay beyond conventional parenting, who has essentially stopped giving a fuck. You call your dad and sob at him until he agrees to come round to be grandad whilst you retire to your bedroom to ruin yourself with the previously mentioned gin.
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Sink to the floor rocking back and forth, gaze blankly into the wall as Maisie picks up the landline cordless phone, calls her father, and says “daddy what does it mean when mummy is on the floor dribbling and making wailing noises?”
If you chose option one: you get to listen to your own mother tell you to get a fucking grip, and listen to her regale you of how she used to have to get six of you young tykes to school on her own with no car. She tells you to ‘hose the buggers down and get on wi it,” In the thickest northern accent you’ll ever hear in your life. You eventually get the kids to school an hour late, wearing a mishmash of vaguely accurate school uniforms, dabs of that now mangled lipstick, and chocolate fingerprints in inappropriate places. You are admonished on arrival by a very disapproving deputy head master, and leave before you realise you forgot to pack their lunches. You park up in the middle of nowhere, press your face against the steering wheel, and scream yourself hoarse. You eventually open the car door, and watch in horror as your mobile phone drops into a deep puddle, rendering it completely useless.
A telltale hiss alerts you to the fact that you drove over a very sharp piece of glass, so you now also have a flat tyre. You spend the next hour wandering doggedly along the uneven road, before knocking on people’s doors until you get an answer. You yourself are wearing the latest in vomit, smudged lipstick, and chocolate frosting. Your mumbling and terrible appearance prompts the woman at the door to call the police.
You are carted off in a police car, whereupon you have to be collected later on by a very confused sister, who had to bribe your mother with cheap vodka to take the kids after school. She is not sure which one of you was the best to leave the kids with at that point.
If you chose option two: your kids squeal in delight as they realise there’s no school, and they welcome grandad in who also brings them entirely too much sugar, setting them off into shrieking whooping episodes that rattle the entire house. You cuddle your giant Aldi brand bottle of gin, wonder how the fuck you managed to balls this shit up first thing in the morning, and pass out. You are woken some hours later by the cat pissing on your hair, accompanied by your little darlings standing in a row at the side of your bed, smirking as Maisie says “Ha ha, mum’s trollied again.” Your father zips up his best Marks and Spencer wax jacket, and deposits a rather wilted ham sandwich on the bedside table telling you to “wake up dear, I need to go home and watch Countdown.”
You turn over, and promptly fall out of bed as the kids laugh at you before going back to play Minecraft, leaving you to wallow in your own gin fuelled misery. You lay there for an hour or so before ordering a family pizza meal via the Just Eat app, and let the children fill themselves up with e-numbers, until they all fall asleep on the sofa in a pizza coma until the following morning.
If you chose option three: your ex husband is now standing in front of your face, clicking his fingers and muttering something about calling the doctor. He waves his hands about a bit and yells “FOR FUCK’S SAKE KAREN CAN YOU JUST GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER FOR ONE DAY?! IT’S MY ONE NIGHT WITH CHARDONNAY THIS WEEK BECAUSE SHE IS BUSY WITH HER BALLET RECITAL THE REST OF THE TIME.” Chardonnay is daddy’s new girlfriend and is in fact, half his age. Hearing her name prompts a new bout of wailing, and much swearing ensues from your ex as he picks up his phone and angrily dials the doctors surgery citing an emergency.
A few hours later, you are off your tits on diazepam, and your ex husband is furiously ranting on Facebook because he had to take the kids on the one night of the week he could be shagging Chardonnay. You realise this is in fact a WIN, because you are high as fuck, there are no kids about, and you can laze about and read a terribly written dark erotica novel with all the sexual appeal of a salted slug.