Saturday, May 14, 2011

Growling Bears, Spinning Party Guests, and Bobbing Hearts

Today, I thought I would share with you a few random experiences that I have had over the years, experiences that have made me the model of sanity that I am.

Once, two delivery men refused to bring the furniture I ordered into the house and would only leave it on the back porch because they saw a bag of dog food sitting near the door and as one of them put it, "That don't say Kibbles and Bits, that says Kibbles and Chunks."

When I was a little girl, my family used to go camping each summer in tents by a lake in the Adirondack Mountains. The campsite had outhouses that all the campers shared. Sometime around the age of seven or eight, I woke up in the night and had to pee. I left the tent and started up the path to the outhouse, but stopped when I heard growling. Thinking that it was a bear, I squatted down and wet myself. Turns out it was only my grandpa snoring in the neighboring tent. Oops.

On those same camping trips, at the age of five, I was so scared of water that my father used to bribe me by paying me a nickel if I would wade in up to my knees and then squat down until my shorts got wet. I could have saved him the money. All he had to do was have my grandpa snore and my shorts would have gotten wet for free.

On my honeymoon, my first trip outside the States, Herbie and I took a cruise. Many of the waitstaff on the cruise were Indonesian. On the last night of the cruise, I wanted to personally thank each of our waiters. I pointed to a group of waiters and asked the head waiter what our waiter's name was. He said, in a heavy accent, "Which one," and I said, "That one," and pointed again. He said, "Which one," and I said, "That one right there. The one on the left." We did this one more time before someone at the table was merciful enough to tell me, through his laughter, that the head waiter was telling me the guy's name was Rishwan.

I have told my family for years that sometimes when I laugh with food in my mouth, the food will shoot up the holes in the roof of my mouth and end up in my nose. I can blow my nose and there in the tissue is turkey or licorice or whatever I was eating. They never believed me and refused to look at the simple proof in the tissue (go figure). A few weeks ago, we were out to dinner with my oldest daughter when she was surprised by a laugh as she ate. She looked at me, blew her nose, and sure enough, broccoli florets. Don't doubt momma when she tells you she can suck food up into her nose from her mouth.

Sometimes when I get the hiccups, they turn into the burp-ups where each hiccup is a disgusting sounding burp.  One of my daughters has inherited this great gift. When I lived with my parents and this happened, my father would say, "Leave the room." When it happens to my daughter, my husband says, "Good one!" The times, they are a changing.

Once, while out on our motorboat, the engine died, stranding the six of us far from shore with no other boats in sight. We reached for the oars and found that we had left them on the inflatable raft at the dock. With no other options in sight, we grabbed our waterskis, hung over the side of the boat, and used them to paddle. As we finally reached the busier part of the lake, several boats passed us, pointing and laughing, but not coming closer to offer help. At first, I was angry that they didn't assist us in our time of need, but when I thought about how we looked, I realized I probably would have steered clear of us, too. It's always best not to get too close to crazy.

The first time my parents asked my future husband to go on a trip with us, it was in a motorhome. As we drove, my mother opened the freezer to take something out for dinner, causing a shower of ice to fly toward her. She proceeded to jump up and down, wiping at the front of her blouse, and chanting, "Ice went down my hoo-hoos, ice went down my hoo-hoos." He married me anyway.

In college, I played the lead in a play that was a type of melodrama. I had a big dramatic scene where I picked up a "baby" wrapped in blankets and gave a monologue about the cruelties in my life. In one of the performances, the audience started laughing during my heartfelt speech and continued until I finished and exited the stage. I was crushed. Until my fellow actors told me I had been holding the doll upside down with her head clearly visible hanging out of the bottom of the blankets. Luckily, that prepared me for what NOT to do as a mother later on. (okay, so I occasionally picked up one of my babies by the wrong end, but at least there wasn't an audience to witness it)

In the middle of a backyard party at our house with about a hundred guests, an older woman we didn't know very well approached my husband, told him she'd had an accident in our powder room, and then got in her car and left. He found me and we approached the bathroom cautiously, as though it was a crime scene. Turns out she hadn't had the kind of accident I had when I thought I heard a bear, she'd had the kind some people have when they actually see a bear. We immediately called for backup. Doors to the house were locked and anyone pounding on one with a desire to use the bathroom was sent away with wild, panicked excuses. Two daughters guarded the doors, one rushed to light candles and spray anything that would spray, another stood clutching my arm as I shouted instructions between bouts of gagging, and the last daughter, the hero of this piece, helped her father take care of business. She only showed signs of cracking when she asked, "Was she spinning in circles when she did this because it's even on the walls." We made that daughter's boyfriend come in when we were done to sniff around and make sure we had wiped out the smell before we let any of the other party guests come in--see what bonuses come with being an almost member of our family! Seriously, does this kind of thing happen to other people because it would really help me hang onto a shred of my sanity if I knew this was a common occurrence. I have given lots of parties over the years and this was a first for me. I sincerely hope that's one party activity that doesn't become a tradition. I couldn't make myself use that powder room for weeks.

And lastly, one Halloween I went for my annual gynecologist appointment (I know, you're scared already, but be brave). As I lay there assuming the position, the doctor asked me a question. I raised my head slightly to answer her and saw, between my stirruped legs, two hearts bobbing in the air. I shook my head and looked closer and saw that the doctor, in the spirit of Halloween, was wearing one of those headbands that have objects attached to springs, and those pink hearts were bobbing up and down as she asked me intimate details about my body. To add to the surreal atmosphere, when she was finished, she snapped off her gloves, rolled her stool around next to my head, and hearts still bobbing with every word, told me she had found a problem that would need to be checked out with a CT scan and which would almost definitely require major surgery. As it turns out, the problem she found was cancer. So when people ask me how I handled the diagnosis, instead of the words, I remember those two hearts springing left and right, forward and back, and I say, "It wasn't as bad as you would think."

3 comments:

  1. All these stories are definitely shining examples of those moments where "ya just gotta laugh." Love the post!

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  2. Good for you, managing to laughing at that (and get treated for it, too). The bobbing hearts would have given the diagnosis a nice, surreal touch, but I still think you're made of sturdy stuff.

    A friend of mine went to a really posh restaurant with her much older, slightly incontinent sister. They drank a lot of wine and at some point, someone told the sister a very funny joke. They can't go back to that restaurant now.

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  3. Ha, ha, Mary, that's a riot! Hopefully, she was sitting on the jokester's lap when the punch line came.

    Thanks for stopping by! To be honest, I wasn't exactly concentrating on the scary stuff. I was too busy writing the dialogue of how I would share the story in my head. I think I spend a majority of life turning my experiences into stories instead of actually living them. :)

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