Adventures in Shipping

(A spin-off from the Adventures in Shopping series)

We bought a Nintendo Wii to sell on Ebay. It sold rather quickly, and we made a small profit. So my job yesterday was to get it shipped. No problem, right? Well, that all depends on how the boys decide to behave. And yesterday, they decided not to behave.

It all happened like this: We walk into the UPS store, and I tell the boys to stick close to me and not touch anything. Apparently, what they actually hear is something along the lines of "Run amok and pull everything you can off the shelves." So I'm trying to give the guy all the shipping information, and the boys are chasing each other around the store with cardboard mailing tubes. Not too big a deal, but then as we're about to leave, the UPS guy says, "Your kid pulled a bunch of cards off the shelf." So I apologize and start picking them up. I try to get them in some kind of order, but meanwhile Owen is on the next aisle pulling those cards off the shelf, and Drew is by the Xerox machine pushing buttons. So I grab Drew with one hand and put cards back as fast as I can with the other. When I finish, I grab Owen's hand and make for the exit. But Owen isn't finished and makes a grab toward the last row of cards. He succeeds in pulling them all down, at which point the UPS man actually says to me, "Just leave. I'll clean it up."

I have never been so embarrassed in my life (at least that I can recall; I probably have, but this embarrassment is currently crowding out any previous embarrassments). I can never go back to the UPS store again. Not that I go there all that often, but David's plan is to get a couple more Wiis and try to sell those, too.

The first thing I did when I got home was go online and order little backpack harnesses for the boys. They are really cute and come with a leash so the boys will have to stay fairly close to me, hopefully making it easier for me to do damage control or, better yet, damage prevention. But I may just have to resign as Designated Wii Shipper.