I Swear, I Couldn't Make This Stuff Up If I Tried

So, do you remember Mrs. Carpool from last year? This woman has rubbed me the wrong way from the get-go. She’s the kind of person who cannot possibly be happy for anyone else. Everything is about her, all the time.

When we moved into this house, we redid the kitchen. If I do say so myself, it is stunning. Truly. All new, black appliances. Maple cabinetry. Black granite countertops. And spacious. Everyone, everyone who walks into the kitchen, everyone, stops and says, “Wow.” Now, bear in mind, I use the kitchen. A lot. I cook huge meals for every Shabbat. I cook a full-fledged dinner most nights of the week. I host meals at least twice a month, and typically four to six times a month. So I don’t feel bad about having finally, finally created a kitchen that I absolutely love.

OK.

So, a year ago, when we moved into this house, Mrs. Carpool stopped by to drop something off. “Come in,” I told her, “Come in and see the kitchen.”

She walked into the kitchen, looked at me questioningly, and said, “What am I looking at?”

That is the kind of person she is. In spite of the fact that her kitchen is easily, easily twice the size of mine, she can’t smile and say, “Wow, this is great!” Because if I have something good, that might make hers less good.

With that in mind, let us move on to today’s story. Which is actually yesterday’s story. Which actually begins about a week or so ago.

One afternoon, I got a call from Mrs. Carpool. This, in and of itself, is noteworthy. I am not on her typical “to call” list. Anyway, she tells me that her daughter E. wants S. to come over. We have lived here over a year, and we have had E. over before, but no one in my family had ever been invited into the inner sanctum that is Mrs. Carpool’s home.

I walked S. over, and when I got there, Mrs. Carpool mentioned that they were planning E’s birthday party to be held the following week after school one day. She told me the date and time and I entered it into my Blackberry.

Last Sunday, when she was dropping something off at my house, she called from the car, “We are OFF for this Tuesday.” She’s giving me this look as if to say, “Don’t press me for details in front of the kid,” so I nodded. OK.

Yesterday, I was at the park when one of the other mothers approached me.

“So, I just have to know,” she says. “Are you one of the lucky few?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Remember how E. was going to have a birthday party and then it was cancelled? Well, apparently it’s back on, but only with a select few girls. Basically, E. decided to uninvited several of the people she had already invited, and her mother helped her do it.”

And then, this mother continues, because there was no way that I was going to carpool with these people again this year, she was roped into doing it, so she takes E. home every day. So the day after E. UNIVITED her kid to the party, she gets in the car after school and says, “So, you know, even if you’re not invited to a party, it’s OK to still give a present.”

She’s going to grow up to be just like her mother. Almost brings a tear to your eye.