I spend enormous amounts of time sitting in the car, waiting to shuffle children from one activity to another activity. It’s peaceful time that I spend writing, reading, chatting and (occasionally) killing zombies without the distraction of laundry and dishes. Unless the air is so funky that my breathing sounds like Wheezy, I roll down the windows, turn off the engine and settle in with my stack of paperwork and electronics. Since most of the other cars around me keep their windows rolled up to fend off the suffocating heat, the resulting quiet prevents me from constantly shouting, “Squirrel!” Regardless of my productivity level, the time is well spent.

Last week, I sat in the car line at the elementary school and updated meetings and activities in my planner. The stillness was broken by the appearance of the carpool volunteers whose shouts and gestures control the movement of cars and children. The “move forward” signal from the volunteer jarred me into action. My left hand rolled up the car windows while my right hand started the engine. I started to pull the lever from P to D and out of nowhere, a butterfly attacked me. I’m not joking. A large butterfly was determined to land on my nose and no amount of my arms waving it away would deter it from its’ goal. Maybe it wanted to go inside my nose and eat the pollen. I like butterflies as much as the next person, but I don’t want to try driving with a butterfly on my face. Or in my nose. The carpool volunteer motioned again with an additional bit of urgency. I had one hand rolling down windows and one hand shoving at the air to defend myself against the brutal attack by the evil butterfly. As I am not an incarnation of Lakshmi, I had no free hands to actually drive the car.

With the completely frustrated carpool volunteer marching toward me and what I am certain was every driver behind me scratching their heads in confusion, the butterfly danced in the air and flitted out the car window in search of a new nose. I scooted the car forward and apologized profusely. The butterfly incident could have been a random coincidence. The butterfly incident could have been attributed to the rise in the butterfly population to counter the bee population disappearing. Pollination, or umm, life finds a way. I think I’ll consider the butterfly incident a genius marketing plan for tonight’s episode of Venture Brothers. Random failed attacks by butterflies shouldn’t cause nearly the trouble that Mooninites caused Adult Swim. Well . . . unless you try driving a car during the butterfly attack.