"Mom, I have a story for you but first you gotta promise me something."
"That I won't write a blog about it, right?"
"Ri-iiight," he or she confirmed. (That limits your guesses to 6 people who call me that.)
In the background I heard kids' voices chiming, "Blog it, Nana! Blog it!"
This was gonna be good. As you can see we reached a compromise at the corner of embarrassingly funny and anonymity.
"I took our van to the mechanic today because of the loud swishing noise erratically coming from the engine through the dashboard." (All 3 of our kids have vans!) "The mechanic climbed in with me and reached for the direction of the radio. Turning it off, the engine trouble disappeared. So did I, as soon as I could get away."
Laughing, I asked, "Did he charge you?"
"No."
"That's good. Only thing worse than stupidity is paying for it." Seems someone ejected a CD and left the radio on a non-station. Yeah, right. Someone always gets blamed.
I was reminded of two similar family stories. Seems my blog brain works that way. In trilogies. Trying to make him or her feel better, I shared them.
"Years ago, one of my brothers. . ." (that narrows your guess to 2) ". . .heard a strange rattle from their refrigerator. It would come and go. Cleaning the coils, pulling off the back to look at the motor and unplugging it briefly all made no difference to the whimsical, metallic noise. Fearing a motor might burn up and be more costly, he and his wife finally called Sears for a repairman.
He came out and waited with the couple staring at the silent Kenmore. Finally the rattle started up as a motor kicked in. Tilting his skilled ear, the serviceman reached on top of the fridge and removed the glaring culprit. AN EMPTY PIE PLATE!
"I hate to charge you a service fee, sir, but if I make a call, I'm required to by Sears.'"
The voice on my phone laughed with me. Then I continued with another family incident.
Mama and Daddy lived just down the street from us in Raleigh. Her kitchen, like mine, had a built in plexiglass-type cutting board. Hers was a translucent milk-glass with a pebbled texture.
As I popped in one day to visit, Mom sighed in exasperation, "Well I just don't know what else to do!" Smirk on her face, sponge in her hand, she puffed her lips out and blew in my direction.
"What's wrong, Mama?"
"I guess I've ruined my cutting board and don't even know how or when!" she pointed to it with her yellow sponge, reeking of Clorox. We peered over it and the faint circles dotted it in random sizes and colors, some blue, others red and a faint yellow here and there."
I took her sponge and swiped to no avail as she lamented her new kitchen ruined, "I tried Ajax! I tried bleach! I've scrubbed and scrubbed! It doesn't even budge!"
I leaned in closer and noticed the perfect symmetry of the colored drops. "Mom, did you use food coloring here recently?"
"No! Never!"
Slowly I pulled out the drawer beneath her counter cutting board. As I did, I noticed the dots begin to slowly move. At the same moment a Wonder Bread bag popped out of her junk drawer.
"SHAW!" was all she said as she snatched it out of my hand and crammed it into the garbage can.
At least I don't charge. Not for family members anyway!
At your service,
Kathy
FOLLOW UP FROM LAST WEEK:
After last week's embarrassing moments blog, I heard from Dr. Picirilli via his daughter. I won't reveal the name of his unwitting victim, at her request.
June Picirilli McVaySeptember 16, 2010 at 6:57pm Subject: From my Dad I sent the paragraph that you wrote about embarrassing things that had to do with my Dad...and this was his response: Tell Kathy that I remember it well. That wasn’t the only time such a thing happened to me. Billie Sexton (Don Sexton’s wife) did the same thing one night (in Hixon, TN). I did something even worse. . . I thought I was standing next to Clara and patted _____ on her fanny and said, “Let’s go.” You know how red _____’s face can get! Tell Kathy that Clara and I really do intend, some time when we’re in Florence, to get in touch and have lunch with her and Doug. It just seems like the short time we’re there fills up so fast that we never get around to it. |
These are great, Ma!
ReplyDeleteHere's our contribution: Benjamin recently shook the van windows, singing his favorite song, loudly and repeatedly. Finally, Blake cried out in exasperation, "Pleeeease sing something different!"
Benjamin started hissing. We, naturally, asked why. "White noise," he deadpanned, a perfect smirk on his 7-year-old face. Guess it runs in the family.