I see London,
I see France,
I see Emma’s underpants!

“Mama!” An unhappy voice wailed.

Amy Valenti, formerly DeLuca, held the phone away from her ear long enough to yell, “In the kitchen!”  Turning back to the phone, she said, “I have to go.  It sounds like Emma is having a crisis.”

“I’ve already heard all about it,” her older daughter informed her.  “I’m still not sure whether to laugh or feel for the kid.  But I’ll talk to you tomorrow when you drop her off over here, if Emma decides to ever show her face in public again.”

Amy winced.  “That bad?”

“You’ll love it.  I am so fond of my youngest right now.”  Heavy sarcasm was evident in Maria’s voice.

Amy’s younger daughter ran into the room frantically, rebounded off the edge of the table and hit the floor with a thump and a yelp.

“Ow!” She complained, rubbing her hip.  She glared at the table, stuck her tongue out at it, and then burst into tears.

Amy sighed.  Saying a brief goodbye, she hung up the phone with Maria and picked Emma up off the floor.  Settling Emma into her lap, Amy tried to wipe some of the tears away.

“What’s up, kiddo?”  Amy asked gently when Emma had calmed enough to be coherent.

Emma sniffled, wiping her nose with her sleeve.  She shrugged and stared at the floor.  “Nothing.”

Amy raised an eyebrow.  “Really?”  She teased.  “Nothing got you so upset that you ran up two floors of stairs to get up here and throw yourself against an innocent table?  What if you had hurt the table?  Where would we eat?”

As Amy had hoped, Emma managed to giggle a little bit at that.  She reached out and patted the table.  “Sorry, Mr. Table,” she whispered.

“Now tell me what really happened.”

“Oh Mama!”  Emma dropped her head into her hands.  “It was TERRIBLE!”

“What was?”  Amy felt like she was pulling teeth to get any information.  She wished she had had time to interrogate Maria while they were on the phone.

“Well,” Emma sniffed.  “Michael said we could walk down to the MacDonald’s to play on the playground for a while.  There were a bunch of kids from me and Joey’s class there, too.”

Amy handed her daughter a tissue before Emma’s sleeve got any wetter.  “We?”  She asked.  “You mean, Michael and your nieces and nephews?”

Emma nodded.  “And everybody else.”  She paused, “I still don’t understand how I can have a niece and a nephew older than me, though.”

“You’re trying to change the subject,” Amy informed her daughter.  “Did something happen at MacDonald’s?”

Emma slouched down into her mother’s lap and concentrated on shredding her tissue into confetti.

“Emma,” Amy sighed.  “Please, tell me.”

“You’re going to laugh,” Emma said grumpily.

“No, I won’t,” Amy reassured her daughter.

“Yes, you will,” Emma insisted.  “Michael laughed.”

“That’s because Michael is an idiot,” Amy said.  As an afterthought, she added, “Don’t tell your sister I said that.”

Emma twisted around.  “Why not?  Maria says he is an idiot, too.”

“Because I said so, that’s why.”

Emma sighed.  “Fine.  So I was playing on the monkey bars with Missy Valenti and Katie Whitman and I was trying to do a skin the cat.  And when I did, my dress came up, and Joey was looking.”

“Uh oh.”

Amy waited.  After a few seconds of silence, she asked,  “So is that everything?  Your dress came up on the monkey bars and Joey saw your underwear?”

“No.”

“What else?”

“Oh, Mama!  He told the whole playground I was wearing Care Bear underwear!”  Emma’s voice was anguished.  She dropped her head back into her hands.

Amy’s face could not be described.  She soothingly patted her upset daughter’s back.

Finally, Emma looked up and sighed.  “I think I’ll go to my room.  I might as well get used to it.  I’m never leaving it again.”  Glumly, the small girl trudged off.

Amy managed to wait until she heard Emma’s door shut.

Then she covered her mouth with a dishtowel, sat down on the floor and laughed until she cried.