The Neverending Story

 Younger missed his alarm, hence, his bus.

He doesn't do that often. Most of the time, he is the best regulated person in our house.

Which is a high standard to maintain; perhaps he is feeling it.  Anyway, that would have been enough for one morning if he didn't say halfway to our destination "Damn, I forgot my earplugs.  But you can come back and drop them off."

Context: today is a long day; school, bowling, indoor percussion, in that order.  The earplugs are for the last. He won't need those until 6 pm.

As if I had nothing better to do. I do have to work, and oh yeah, run the other guy to his job and back. But I haven't had my coffee yet, and I am smart enough to not blurt when I haven't been properly caffeinated.  I pause for a second.  "Um.  How about I do that when I have a reason to be back this way--either when I drop your brother off for work or when I pick him up?" I don't mention that he could keep these things in his backpack so he doesn't have to worry about remembering them. 

He already does a lot of that executive functioning stuff--all the stuff the rest of us have a hard time with. Like I said, he gets held to a higher standard.

If that weren't enough, work fell off elder's radar today. Around noon, I started watching the time and listening for him to come up and get changed. When he hadn't shown up by 12:39, I went down to see what was keeping him.  He looked at me blankly and told me he wasn't due in until tomorrow.

Um. It was there that I kinda lost it.  He managed to quickly get himself together, and I was able to deliver him to his workplace--on time, with time enough for him to review the Costco shopping list with me. 

Which has led me to consider all the coping mechanisms each of us has in place for our respective blind spots. As a collective, we can write a fairly exhaustive manual on literally all the coping strategies. The list is as awe-inspiring as it is mind boggling. Considering what each of us has on our own plates, we are doing okay.

Could be better, but I am grateful for okay.

I took advantage of the sortie with elder to get younger's ear plugs over to him.  Meanwhile, a couple of my former colleagues started chatting, and I couldn't attend, because driving.  The high school was in the middle of a lock down drill, but they allowed me to come in and drop off the ear plugs.

I stood outside the high school and pondered the absurdity of it all.  Elder asked me "What's the point?" as I was driving him to work.

What's the point, indeed.