I’ve told you before that riding in the car is one of Noah’s favorite things. Bonus points for a busy interstate. Double bonus points if you get stuck in traffic.
Reaching the destination? Betrayal of the highest order. It never ceases to make him angry. The shorter the drive – the angrier he gets.
It goes something like this:
We arrive to an appointment less than 10 minutes from home. Noah starts to yell. When he was a little boy it was a squalling cry with huge tears. It took him a while to pull it together. Now it’s yelling. I’m not sure what words he’s using, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know.
He doesn’t fuss at me while we are rolling into the office – because we are moving. But then we get in line and everyone in the room knows he’s mad. He has no shame. We pull up to the front desk, almost always to a woman who says hello. He stops fussing long enough to reward her with a huge smile. Really? Then he fusses at me some more. I tell him I’m not listening.
After the paperwork and the copay, we go sit down. Noah fusses at me some more. I tell him I’m not listening and play sudoku. He sees I’m not listening and he quiets. Pretending to ignore him is my best weapon. Then I make the mistake of making eye contact, and he fusses some more. I go back to my sudoku.
The next time I look up, Noah grins at me, and I say, “Are you over it now?”
He fusses some more, and I go back to ignoring. He’s quiet for a minute, so I chance looking up again. The smile he gives me is radiant.
“You’re a knucklehead, Noah.”
The smile gets even bigger. We are back to having fun and charming everyone around.
And this is pretty much every stop.
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