by Joyce Bueter

Created on: September 03, 2010

 Those few words, “Mom, I see a mouse” shouldn’t be cause for the complete and utter break down of a grown person, but they were.  Those five little words caused me to lose my mind and put both myself and my daughter in mortal danger.  In fact, that little critter put everybody in the immediate area in mortal danger!

I was headed down the road in my old beater car. Not a care in the world.  It was before the days of seatbelts and my five year old was standing up behind my seat talking right in my ear.  We were headed to town for our weekly shopping trip.  The old car didn’t look so hot but it ran well and got us there and back which is all anybody requires anyway.  Something had happened to the floor boards and parts of them were missing. Consequently there was an opening beneath the accelerator which resulted in the driver being able to see all the way down to the roads surface.  This particular day we were motoring along quite nicely when all of a sudden my daughter utters the immortal words, “Mom, I see a mouse.”  Oh, come on sweetie, you don’t see a mouse.  Yes, I do mommy, was the reply.  Where? I queried.  The answer came with no hesitation, “right under your foot”.   I looked down and sure enough, Mr. Mouse was looking back at me from under the accelerator!

 Well, naturally I screamed and started stomping on the gas pedal.  I forgot all about steering and watching the road.  The car was bunny hopping and weaving wildly back and forth across the road.  Thank goodness, there was no traffic at the time!  I finally realized I didn’t see the little monster any longer and managed to get myself together long enough to pull to the side of the road and stomp the gas pedal a few more times.   I saw nothing of Mr. Mouse and figured he must have decided he was in dire danger and disembarked in order to save his own precious hide.  Frankly, at the time, I wasn’t too concerned with his safety.

 I breathed a heavy sigh of relief, wiped the sweat from my brow, waited for my heart to slow down and thanked the Good Lord for my safety and keeping others off the road.   There was no more excitement that day as we continued on with our weekly outing but I never forgot that little excursion into delirium, just me, my daughter, the mouse, and the old beater car.

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