Elastic

It was an almighty harumph, from a champion harumpher. My husband stomped past me, muttering. I was only able to pick out a few words in between the mumbled oaths. In a brief moment of articulation, he built up from a Muttley style “Shnikinrickin fashinrockn rassafrassa rickinrackets” to a climactic Jim Royle-esque “Easy? My arse!”.

The source of his impatience was a bag of tiny elastic bands and a plastic tool. Earlier, he’d taken my daughter to the orthodontist, who'd shown him, effortlessly, how the bands needed to be attached to hooks on her top and bottom braces to pull her gnashers together while she slept. His stomp was due to the lack of success on his inaugural attempt.

“I can’t remember you being this rubbish at Operation...” I commented, as I walked past him, with the irritating air of one who is convinced they will be able to swan in, adeptly perform the task the other failed at, and then be all smug about it. I'd picked this dig at his board game skills over the obvious, but ruder: "Should have thought you'd be used to manipulating a tiny, pink, tool..."

Once upstairs, I picked up the hook implement, and approached my daughter, who was lying in her bed. 

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, Mum’ll sort you out,” I reassured my slightly anxious-looking girl. With a few deft moves, one side was hooked, lined and sinkered.

We smiled at eachother. “I don’t think Daddy was very good at this, was he?” I whispered.“Let’s get this other side done, and we can tell him he was rubb...”  I didn’t reach the ‘ish’. The second band was proving a bit trickier, and suddenly it slipped, and catapulted up from the bottom of her mouth to her top gum, with an almighty TWAAAAAANGGGGG!. 

“Are you all right?” I asked, thinking that the elastic missile must have hurt. My girl couldn’t answer. She was shaking. Concerned, I grabbed her face in my hands and looked at her, and it was then that I realised she was giggling, uncontrollably.

Sometimes a mishap or a setback can reverberate, and set my daughter's nerves jangling. Less often, unpredictably, amazingly, she might even find it funny; this was one of those occasions. She set me off, too.  We were reduced to a heap of jelly, both giggling and making intermittent "Dddd-DOING!" noises, our laughs pinging backward and forward like the wayward band.

Video is Sultans Of Ping FC - Where's Me Jumper?