marty showed stress before the new week even began. sensing this i offered to take the kids to my folks on saturday giving the house to marty from one in the afternoon to eight in the evening. hours after penning the deal she remembered a meeting she had to attend from 9am to noon that same day.

having gone to bed early friday night in preparation of my day, i woke up at 4am. anthony followed at 7am. he and i went on a crispy cream run. on the way back we saw target opened at 8am and stopped to cruise the aisles. we got home just in time for marty to jet out the door to her meeting. the kids and i ate donuts and watched some episodes of avatar we had on dvd. we then all walked up to my office to get some tools i needed to fix their laptop. our path home sends us over a long and steep pedestrian bridge and ramp. bella and alex were in the double stroller. anthony was on my shoulders. bella and alex were pleading for me to let go of the stroller at the top of the ramp so they could fly down like they do on bikes. obviously i refused this request. as we walked down the ramp they continued working me to let them go. three-fourths of the way down i thought i'd reward them and pretended the stroller slipped from my grasp and i let them go fake calling after them to stop. my thought was they'd get a little bit of speed and then be slowed by the uphill grade at the base of the hill. instead the weighted stroller took off like a loose skateboard quickly gaining momentum. after it had gone about twenty feet and with about ten to go, the stroller banked hard to the right, slammed into the side railing and flipped over as if someone had stuck a broom handle in the front wheel, both of the small occupants disappearing beneath the overturned cart.

anthony and i jogged to the carnage. i put him down and lifted the stroller off of the pancaked children. bella's lecture began before i even put hands on the stroller saying things like, "father! how could you do that to two of your children?!" (memories do get short in time of crises) a face-down alex was silent and motionless. i envisioned our first trip to the hospital being moments away. i gently turned him over and found him to be shaken but undamaged. while still crouching over alex, bella barked in my ear that mother was going to be very displeased knowing i did this to them. trying to turn the tide, i told bella i would have to use my magic to disappear the memory from their heads so they couldn't rat me out. bella said i had no magic and i should stop pretending i did. this debate carried on for the rest of the slow walk home.

once home and again crowded on the futon hunched over a thirteen inch laptop, we resumed our avatar marathon. after one episode marty returned home and she and i got us packed up for our daytrip to the grandparents in the woods. the second our van rounded the corner out of our neighborhood i told bella and alex they both had to admit their father's magic was strong. they asked what i meant. i reminded them that i said i was going to use my magic to make them forget to tell mom about the accident and since they forgot to mention it, it proved my magic was real. bella contested the point saying it wasn't my magic at all but she simply forgot (or re-got as she still likes to say). i reminded her that the whole point of my magic was to make her forget. she said it wasn't my magic and she wouldn't say my magic was strong. i told her i wouldn't talk to or play with either of them until they admitted their father's magic was strong. exasperated they finally conceded the point and paid their respects.

we spent the day at the grandparents and returned home in the evening. the kids again forgot to tell marty about the crash. so just before they crawled into beds i called bella to me, placed a hand on her forehead and said, "i use my magic to un-dissapear the memory from your head." as soon as i finished my line bella's eyes lit up and she exclaimed, "mom! you're not going to believe what dad did to us today!" before she went to sleep that night i made her re-commit her belief in her father's magic.

the next day a neighbor girl was over and bella told her of the the previous day's mishap. i added the part about making she and alex forget to tell on me. both girls huffed and challenged me to do some magic on them. i made a whimsical incantation that ended with me saying i was going to make the two little girls before me have to take breaths of air. they fought it hard but in the end obviously lost. they said i was lucky on that one and challenged me to do something else. for my second feat i told them i would make their eyes blink and no matter how much they tried to resist, they would not be able to. i again prevailed. so my rough and long and potentially disastrous weekend ended with my daughter and her friend from down the street professing their admiration and acceptance for the magic of troy.