Those are the words that come to my mind as I think about our nearly ruined night. I’m thinking them about my kiddos.
Drive-in movies are awesome. Am I right? Yeah, you know I am. I went to the drive-in fairly often as a kid, but guess what friends, they don’t have drive-in movie theaters in England, so my kids have never had the experience of hanging out in the car watching a movie, running around next to the car during intermission, eating movie theater type foods. You get the gist.
To rectify this travesty, I surprised them with a trip to the local drive-in movie theater tonight. Mr. Stubborn has been begging to see the new Paw Patrol movie and it just so happened to be paired up with the new Space Jam movie the older kiddos wanted to see. It was a win-win for everyone.
After grabbing some pizza from Pizza Joes (which the kids have also been begging for and you will probably only understand if you’re from western PA and which I also learned later you are not supposed to take into the drive-in, whoops) we headed out to see some movies. Things were going along hunky dory until it started raining. We were still about 15 minutes away from the theater and it was still about 45 minutes until the movie started, so I told the kids not to worry, the rain would likely stop before the movie started and if it didn’t, we could always watch it from inside the tent. After all it wouldn’t be the first time we’d put up the tent in the rain.
This pacified all of them as I thought to myself at least it’s not raining too hard, should still be a fun night. Then whack, thunk, whoosheroo sounded and I was now short one windshield wiper. The driver’s windshield wiper. We’re not talking about just the wiper blade either. The whole arm, blade, etc. everything was gone – flew off the truck into who knows where.
And I mean really, who knows where it went because we turned around and then drove back down the road inching along the shoulder, with the windows down, in the rain looking for it. It was nowhere to be found. Just poof, gone.
Needless to stay, we pulled off the road, put the hazards on and just sat. It was raining too hard to continue to drive without a wiper and I’d tried and failed to switch the passenger one over to the driver’s side. All I could think was how much I hated our truck in that moment and how hard it was going to be to find a replacement, but that’s not what my children were thinking. Nope, not even close.
They said, “Don’t worry Mom, it’s okay. We’ve got our tent and our sleeping bags and enough pizza to feed us through the night. We’ll be okay if we have to sleep here on the side of the road.” That’s when I realized just how awesome my kids are.
They weren’t bothered about missing the movie or missing a wiper. They looked around and realized we had any and everything we could possibly need and knew we’d be all right. Then gave me a pep talk, so I’d know we’d be all right. Couple of motivational speakers in training right there.
Eventually, the rain slowed enough to drive and we made it to the drive-in with enough time to eat and get situated before the movie started. It also held off so we could make it back to my sister’s house afterwards.
I don’t know if it’s been this trip and all the things that have gone wrong; when we’ve just had to push through and make do, but I couldn’t have been more surprised and more proud of them for helping me to see the bigger picture rather than be annoyed by the moment. I hope that’s a lesson I can take forward from this and that they will continue being resourceful whenever trouble hits because with thousands of miles left to go, I have a feeling we’re not out of the woods just yet.