I Can't Take Them Anywhere!

My kids go everywhere with me and I do mean everywhere. Well, the teenagers are becoming more independent and stay home from some stuff, but when they were little, you didn't see Kate without the Irish twins in tow. I homeschool and finding a babysitter in the middle of the day is a fucking nightmare, and I actually spank my kids so they know to behave in public. We save the acting like a monkey for at home. Needless to say, I am very lucky that I could take them with me to meetings or fundraisers or whatever.

After the invasion, the battalion CO had an AAR (after action review) with the FRG leaders and rear-d to see what went well on the homefront and what was fucked up. I was the battalion secretary at the time and had to be there to take notes, so the kids got an extended lunch break to tag along with Mama and the battalion leadership got a show.

Everyone brought their kids to this shit--mine just happened to be about 4 or 5 years older than the rest of the rug rats and so got sent to the corner with the rest under orders to keep the little ones occupied. And my two were happy to do it. They love little kids. So off they go to the other side of the room with 7 or 8 little ones to put in a movie and play while the grown-ups discuss important things.

Halfway through the meeting, the LT across from me starts biting his hand and kicking me under the table. I'm thinking, you fucker. But he's trying not to laugh and starts pointing over my shoulder to the other side of the room. The colonel by now has seen what is going on behind me and is gagging from trying to hold the laughing in. By this point, I do not want to know what the fuck is going on. I am afraid to turn around. But the whole room is trying to maintain some level of professionalism and failing miserably, so now I have no choice. I turn around.

And there, on the other side of the room, are my two wonderful kids. They have all the little ones in a single file line and are leading them around in this twisted game of follow the leader. No big deal. The truly horrible/funny thing is that they have found magazines which they have passed out to all the children and have taught them something that they probably shouldn't know, but their mother is a bad parent and has let them watch selected parts of the Holy Grail at the ripe old ages of 7 and 8. These children are parading around chanting in Latin, "Pie Jesu Domine. Dona Eis Requiem" and then beating themselves on the head with the magazines.

Fuck.  Me.