The Secret

"How do you do it?" Brad asked.

I was at the copy machine, trying to make copies (in two minutes or less) of a test I had just finished writing for my students to take right away. I was rushing so that I could leave the test with a sub, freeing me up to take Sumner to a doctor's appointment.

Brad chatted with a frenzied me. He doesn't have children. "Tim and I were talking this weekend and we just don't know how people with kids get it all done. I mean our weekends are crazy. By the time we clean up and grocery shop and run a few errands and grade papers, we're beat and it is time to start a new week. And it is just the two of us. I just don't know how parents do it." He gave the obligatory slow head shake, right to left, twice.

I looked at Brad and said, "I'll tell you the big secret. Parents just don't get 'it' done. You can't. Not in the same way. Crazy things happen. For instance, you find yourself driving to work and you think: I didn't brush my teeth. And then you think: I guess I better chew a piece of gum so I don't smell. That's the big secret: you just don't get it all done."