Guest Blogger

This is the fourth of five Drop-In Centre guest posts by Leanne Shirtliffe of www.ironicmom.com over the month of March. Come back every Wednesday to get her humorous take on holidays big and small, real and made-up.

It’s National Near-Miss Day. This pseudo holiday was named because twenty-some years ago, there was a near miss involving an asteroid and our lovely planet. Of course a near miss in scientific terms means half a million miles, but no matter.

As a parent, I have had lots of near misses. There was the time I found my twins in the bathtub playing with my razor. Vivian sat in bubbles, witnessing the crime scene. William, knees bent, had cut his leg and a thin line of blood was trickling into the water. I’m thankful he missed his femoral artery.

There was the time I was driving down a busy highway and realized I forgot to buckle my kids into their seat belts. Vivian and William had only recently begun to fasten themselves in and I had forgotten to check. I realized it when a face appeared inches from mine, saying “Hi, Mom. I’m out of my seat!” Of course, there was nowhere to pull over, but we survived without a crash test dummy reenactment.

And there was the time I realized I was pregnant. Well, I suppose that was a full miss of a woman’s monthly ritual, rather than a near one. Sometimes complete misses are good.

I find it interesting that this cut-it-close holiday shares the date with National Chip-and-Dip Day. Now this is a festivity worth celebrating. Most great memories from my own childhood involve chips and dip, particularly Old Dutch Salt-and-Vinegar Chips (I still open the bag with my teeth) and Kraft Onion Dip. Kraft Onion Dip just may be the best way to get kids to eat vegetables.

I used to play Cribbage with my parents on Saturday nights, the same night we got to have chips, dip and pop. I can still imagine the grease marks on the cards, where I tried to add up numbers to make 15 or 31.

I remember hanging out in our tent trailer with my sister and my cousins, a virtual playhouse for farm kids. We’d sit around the table-that-converts-into-a-bed, inhale chips, dip and diet pop, and giggle.

My kids, though, rarely get chips. I don’t buy them. I’m pretty sure William and Vivian share the same lack of restraint as me because of the way they behaved at my sister’s when they were two years old. Neither of them moved from the bowls of chips and dip the entire evening. I’m pretty sure William and Vivian had their week’s worth of sodium from chips, while the rest of us were busy getting our week’s worth of calories from alcoholic beverages.

Tonight, then, in honour of National Near-Miss Day and National Chip-and-Dip Day, I’ll be raising a salt-and-vinegar chip (onion dipped, of course) and giving thanks to all those near misses.

Leanne Shirtliffe is the mother of six-year-old twins, William and Vivian, also known as Thing One and Thing Two. Leanne lives by the motto, "If you can't laugh at yourself, laugh at your kids." When she's not telling her children to stop licking a frozen flagpole, she's writing and teaching teens. She blogs at IronicMom.com. Follow her on Twitter @ironic_mom.