Vicki, Bill and I fell to reminiscing about the irritating and/or funny things that parents put up with: Babies get into their diapers while they’re supposed to be napping and smear dung over everything that they can reach. . . Kids give each other horrible haircuts . . . They lock themselves in bathrooms and can’t get out. Bill’s older brother, Lex, asked him if he’d like to know what it felt like to be hanged. “Well, I guess so,” replied Bill. Using a coat hanger, Lex proceeded to hang him from a hook, leaving a mark on his neck.
One Saturday, Mother and I were on the Central Swallow bus. A little boy had a paper sack on his head. His mother moaned, “First he poured a whole box of laundry soap in the washing machine — suds everywhere. Then he got into the pie I’d baked for the church dinner. Next he cut off the cat’s whiskers. He jammed his potty on his head, and I can’t get it off. I couldn’t find anyone to cut it off In Spiceland or Knightstown, and now I’m on my way to Greenfield.”
I was not pleased when Vicki took her little fishing pole and put a hook through the lip of her stupid, obstreperous mutt, “Rudolph-the-Red-Nosed-Reindeer-Dog.” Traffic stopped, and people laughed while he frolicked along behind me at the end of the fishing line until we arrived at the home of a neighbor who had wire cutters.
Vicki cackled about the time that her boys decided to make pancakes. Hearing their shrieks of delight, she discovered that they’d broken a dozen eggs on the floor and were sliding around in them. “They were too funny to spank!”
One of my cousins picked the buds off my uncle’s prize peonies and got a butcher knife and stabbed the upholstery of her parents’ brand new car. “Did you spank her?” Mother asked my aunt. “No. If I’d touched her, I might have killed her.”
Jean had a huge fight with her mother. Her mother bought an ugly, straw sailor hat with streamers for her and insisted that she wear it to church on Easter Sunday. Jean refused, and they got into a screaming match that was so bad that Jean’s father finally sided with Jean and put an end to it. “We laughed about it later, but we certainly didn’t laugh then!”
Sometimes the best of motherly intentions go awry! Perfectionist Jana decided that she should interact more with her three kids. She had visions of the happy family making Christmas cookies together. “They didn’t want to make cookies. They fought and whined, and the kitchen was a mess.” Exasperated, she decided that she was not going to be Mother of the Year.
She established a cozy Christmas tradition of having the children gather round while the Nativity Scene was being set up and carefully explained the meaning behind it. When their son was four years old John and she discovered that he had put Baby Jesus in a matchbox car and was racing him around the Christmas tree. She said, “You know, I really felt as if I had failed, somehow.” Personally, I suspect that He would have enjoyed it! wclarke@comcast.net