State of the Union

Speaking of something fishy (reference to last post), that reminds me of another story. But this time, it's someone else's story, thank goodness. I used to work with a woman we'll call Ethel. Ethel came to work one day and told me that she'd had this horrible godawful smell in her kitchen. She'd noticed it a week earlier. Every night she'd go through her fridge dumping out all her leftovers, ransacking her trash and the area surrounding it, checking her garbage disposal, opening every cupboard, drawer, nook and cranny. Try as she might, she couldn't find the source of this nauseating smell. And after a week, it was pretty darn rank. She was frustrated and baffled and was nearly to the point of calling in experts to find this horrific stench. She had pretty much decided some critter must have gotten into her walls, died and was decomposing. Finally, the night before she told me this story, she got up on a step stool to try to reach something she had in the cupboard above the fridge. There she found a package of frozen fish she'd taken out of the freezer while she was defrosting it a week earlier. And had totally forgotten about. So it had been sitting up there for a solid week, rotting. 'Oy!

Then there was the time my mother was giving my dad a haircut and the clippers accidentally slipped, leaving a bare patch about an inch wide and two inches long right in the middle of the back of his head. I just happened to be passing by when this occurred. Mom looked at me, her great dark eyes growing round as saucers and I gave the same look back at her. She made the 'zip your lip' gesture and turned back to finish his hair. I headed to my bedroom at top speed, closed the door, threw myself on the bed and laughed till I cried. To this day, I still don't know if that was an accident or not, as she was kind of PO'd at my dad at the time...

And here's another memory of my youth: I had two close girlfriends in high school who we'll call 'Mindy and Lola". We were having a sleepover at Lola's and were all sitting around the kitchen table late that night, telling each other scary stories. The kitchen was small, so the table was right next to the window. As our nerves rose to higher and higher peaks with each fresh story, Mindy glanced at the window and let out a piercing shriek and jumped up! "There's somebody out there!" We all started screaming and trying to race out of the kitchen, knocking over chairs and creating general mayhem. We dashed into the living room, where Lola's younger sister was sitting on the couch with her new boyfriend; they just stared at us wordlessly. Simultaneously, Lola's dad came rushing out of the bedroom...dressed in, of all things, a red union suit. 

Image courtesy of workingperson.com

He was none too happy about being woken out of a sound sleep by three silly, screaming teenage girls. I believe there may have been a few four letter words uttered. While we babbled incoherently about the terrifying specter that was leering in the window at us, my friend's youngest brother strolled in from the direction of the back door and asked, "What the heck is wrong with you girls? It was just me!"

Suddenly the entire picture made itself clear to me and I could not stop laughing! Three goofy girls, knocking over furniture, the angry dad swearing in a red union suit...forty six years later, I still giggle about it. But come to think of it, I'm not sure we ever got invited back to spend the night there! 'Lola', I hope you didn't get into too much trouble. 

Till next time,

"If I can tell someone a story that makes them bend over and laugh, that's bigger than anything else." ~ Bernie Mac