>Wait ‘Til Meredith Hears About This

>As our kids ran around the playground, Laura, Teri and I sat on the sun-warmed benches, lazily watching them.

“It’s a gorgeous day,” Laura said, smiling and turning her face to the sun. “The only thing that would make this better is a nice glass of wine.”

We giggled. A cocktail playdate on the city playground? Soooo not going to happen. Or was it?

“Don’t look now ladies,” Teri said quietly, “but we’ve all got a little joy juice in our diaper bags. You just didn’t realize it.”

Laura and I looked at her curiously.

“What on earth are you talking about, Teri?” I laughed.

Furtively looking around her, Teri reached into her bag and pulled out a large bottle of hand sanitizer. “Take a gander,” she said before unscrewing the top and taking a quick slug. “70-percent alkie-hawl!” she croaked, wiping the Purell from her chin.

Laura and I watched her in shock. After a few seconds of mute contemplation, Laura began rooting in her diaper bag until she found a travel-sized Purell. “Down the hatch!” she grinned, before squirting half the bottle in her mouth and choking.

“Hoo boy!” she exclaimed once her coughing fit was over. “That really hit the spot.”

“I don’t think I have any with me,” I said, digging furiously through my bag while Laura and Teri watched. “We were at the Bellevue Mall playcenter yesterday,” I said apologetically. “I’m pretty sure we used it all up then.”

“It’s okay,” Teri said, hiccuping. “Have some of mine. There’s plenty more where this came from. Why do you think I call it my Dollar Tree Drunk?” she asked, winking.

I took a swig. It burned like fire going down my throat. But within no time, I was feeling the warm glow that can only come from a gut full of sanitizer.

“This ROCKS!” I chortled to the other moms.

Within no time at all, we had joined our toddlers, merrily screeching our way down the slides, dizzily chasing each other through the wooden fortresses and swinging as high as we could on the swings before leaping out and hitting the ground on all fours. In the sandbox, we pelted each other with handfuls of sand, laughing until we cried. Our kids stood to one side, watching us warily.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t my three favorite troublemakers,” a voice intoned from somewhere above us. We looked up, shading our eyes from the bright sun. Abruptly, the laughter stopped.

It was Mary Lee Hastings, president of the Marigold Hills Elementary PTA.

“We wasn’t doin anythinnn wrong,” Teri slurred.

“Yeah,” Mary Lee said sarcastically. “Let me guess. Your kids here looked so danged dirty, you just had to pull out the hand sanitizer, which somehow made its way into your mouths!”

I sighed involuntarily. There went my chances for manning the cake walk room at Spring Fling.

“You ladies astound me,” Mary Lee said, shaking her head and reaching into her bag. Great. She was going to call the Today Show producers. Instead, she pulled out a small plastic container.

“Everyone knows Dial makes the tastiest sanitizer,” she said, grinning and climbing into the sandbox.

Party in a Diaper Bag!
As seen in the New England Journal of Medicine!