Back to the saga that was the fair. You’ll remember from yesterday’s post that I wrote this nice, warm and fuzzy column for High Plains Journal. How sweet. And every single 4-H mother rolled their eyes and thought, “Yeah, right.”

Yep. And they would be right because you know what? I absolutely forgot every. single. word. of that column. The part about don’t sweat the small stuff? Gone. Remember what’s important? Forgotten. Why, you ask?

The time is 5 minutes before the goat show. My oldest walks up to me and this is how it goes:
“Mom, I can’t open your car. It’s locked.”
“No, it’s not. I left it open so you could get your show clothes.”
“Yeah. But it is locked.”
“It can’t be.”
“It is.”
“Then the keys are locked inside it.”
“Huh.”

This set of a mild panic attack. You see, I KNEW the keys were inside. They were NOT in my pocket so there were two choices. Either the car was locked with the keys (and show clothes) inside. Or the keys were lost. Either option was not appealing.

So, out to the parking lot we went. We park near our trailers where our club has a hang-out spot. As we walked to that area, I head directly for my car. My son was following closely behind and soon says, “It’s over here, Mom.”

No, no it wasn’t. The locked car he was trying to open was another 4-H mom’s car. Mine, two cars down was wide open with show clothes hanging on the hook.

Panic over. Crisis avoided. But not before I acted exactly as I had preached NOT to act.

Well, no one ever said I practiced what I preached.