Why, hello, prisoner road crew.

Oh! It's Thursday! Here is your weekly slice of my mortification! This excites you mildly.

I had a hard time choosing today's story, but saw a road work crew with a Middlesex County Sherrif Department van keeping them company and those bright orange jumpsuits decided it for me. 

SO rewind to sometime this past summer, and they're repaving our road. My boys were a mixture of very excited (younger one, who likes trucks et al with enthusiasm bordering on epic) and mildly but not terribly interested (older one, who's said, "SIGH I hate dinosaurs." You hate dinosaurs? Why? "SIGH Well, I guess I don't hate them, but I'm just so tired of hearing about them. 'Oh, do you want to talk about dinosaurs?' NO." Ha ha. He's not 100% on the boy toy trifecta of dinos, trucks, and guns, I guess. Right on, sir.)  

But, despite antipathy on the older, it was still deemed more exciting than anything else going on at 8:30 in the morning (note that the TV wasn't on) so we accumulated in the foyer and filed outside. I was still in my pajamas, which consisted of a racer back tank and yoga capris, no bra. The no bra would normally keep me from the outdoors, but we didn't want to miss the show as it went past the house, so I figured I'd just hold the younger one on my lap as a visual shield and be golden. Onward, I say! To the front porch.

Oh, so many machines. There was a truck of some sort, something that made noise, some sort of giant rolly thing, who knows. It was loud, smelled vaguely terrible, and it was vastly entertaining. The road crew talked to the boys, even, which blew their minds slightly. (The older one wasn't really impressed. He rarely is, unless you have in depth superhero knowledge, like, perhaps, information about Hal Jordan's childhood or can unravel the secret of why there's more than one Robin in a way he can process.)

Oh, wow. Now the machines are mostly going out of sight. Good bye, machines! We enjoyed your -- ack! The small one is taking off! I launch myself after him, yelling, "You were supposed to be my visual shield!" (Okay, I wasn't really yelling that. It was more just a mixture of "Stop!" and things along the lines of "Dammit!" along with picturing him getting hit by a car or crushed by the rolly thing. He is, of course, loving this game of chase, and I am, obviously, not. I am not built to run with no bra, and especially not in public.

But, hark! What's that in the non-distance, pulling up right at the stop sign about 2 feet from my face? Why, it is a van full of prisoners, who have been procured to clean up our little local playground that day. Hello, sirs. Oh, please, DO gawk, that is what I'm here for, in fact, and you have been in the clink (are we still calling it/ did we ever call it the clink? Oh! A helpful list of prison euphemisms!) for so long and I sympathize. Oh, wait, no: empathize? No, wait! Neither! OMG, visual shield, you have failed me. And thusly I gather you in my arms and haul you inside and stew in a heady mixture of shame and embarrassment for approximately one hour. The end.