Your Escalator Ate My Pants. There Was Nothin' I Could Do.

Dexter recently got potty trained. This is a HUGE EVENT. I have been changing diapers every day of my life for 8 years now. For many (if not the majority) of those years I had two children in diapers. Now, all of a sudden, I don't have to change diapers. I do still have to wipe butts, though. That's another blog altogether.

On our third day at Disney, I had arranged for a surprise for my family. I chartered a private boat to take us to go see the fireworks. We had to meet the boat at Disney's Contemporary Resort. There was a huge mix-up. It's a long story and not enough time has elapsed for it to be funny, so I won't get into it, but Dexter wet his pants. We didn't have a change of clothes and our hotel was a good 15 minutes away and the boat was supposed to be there any second. So we took Dexy's pants and undies off, and put an over-sized fleece on him. No one could tell he was going commando under there.

The boat was awesome and so were the fireworks. The kids were completely exhausted and loopy from lack-o-nap and over-stimulation. We were walking back through the lobby of the Contemporary Resort, which is lined with this huge concierge desk. It also has two big escalators.

I was walking Dexter in the stroller when I heard this piercing scream. It was a familiar scream. I hear it every day from Miles, my resident screamer. Miles only has one scream. It sounds like he may have severed a limb, or maybe is currently being eaten by a dog, or on fire or something. Unfortunately, he uses this scream not only for emergencies but for such situations such as 'my brother just looked at me', or 'someone told me no'. Anyway, completely mortified that he chose this opportunity to shriek I stopped the stroller and turned around to see what was going on. I couldn't see him at all, but Jamie was flying towards the escalators that we had just passed.

When you are a mommy, you suddenly possess the ability to think of a hundred horrible scenarios in a split second and that was what my brain did. I settled on the scenario that Miles' fleece string was stuck in the escalator and he was going to be strangled right in front of me. This made me scream "SHIT!" in the middle of a hotel lobby packed full of young children, good parents and smiley happy Disney employees who might as well all be Mormon, what with their smiley happiness and all.

When you are a Daddy you are able to react to a crisis at the speed of light, while your wife stands frozen thinking up scenarios and swearing loudly. I deduce that this is a much more useful instinct.

I left the stroller (with Dexter in it) and raced to the scene. Jamie yanked Miles out from the escalator. There was a sprite can rolling at the bottom of it. I saw that he wasn't strangled, but he was still screaming and his fleece was covering his fingers, and quickly my mommy brain came up with the next worst scenario that he'd lost several fingers. Jamie's daddy instincts were still going strong and he ripped Miles' fleece off of him in 0.02 seconds. All fingers present and accounted for. His knee had gotten pinched and he had bloody stripes on one from kneeling in the escalator. Before I could breath a sigh of relief, or tell the 150 people in the lobby (who were now watching) that all was ok, I heard another familiar scream. It came from the up-escalator right next to us. I turned around to see a coke can rolling at the bottom of the escalator and Dexter (who I left in the stroller, as you might recall) tumbling down. As you might also recall, Dexter isn't wearing pants or underwear. He tumbles down a couple of stairs with his naked bottom sticking out. My mommy instincts render me unable to do anything but come up with the worst case scenario (his penis is going to get pinched off) and swear loudly ("WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON??") It was like 9-11, or something. All these kids were kamikaze-ing onto the escalators.

Jamie's useful Daddy instincts had Dexter off the escalator in no time flat. Although, he did carry him like a sack of potatoes so that his whole nakedness was exposed. Oh man, we are so trailer trash. We've got the horribly behaved kids, one with no pants, and the potty-mouth mother.

I looked at Jamie and said "We have to get the hell out of here."

After the shock of the whole situation wore off, I almost died laughing to realize that many of those people probably thought the escalator ate Dexter's pants.