My little niece Jenny got some quality time with scissors. She walked into the room holding a long lock of freshly shorn hair. She’d sheared her waist-length hair into a jagged mess right above the ear. Shocked, my sister burst into tears and fled the room. Following her mother’s lead, Chelsea, her little sister wailed and ran. Turning to her dad, Jenny wept and said, “I cut my hair and now, now nobody loves me!”
Image courtesy of Pixabay
Bud and I compared notes on our sex education back in the fifties. “Oh yeah, I got one sentence. ‘Quit playing with your goober.’ ”
I think I got sex uneducation instead. Mother kept us under her eagle eye. “You kids play here where I can see you.” Should we get quiet while playing, she’d be on us in a heartbeat to breakup any attempts to investigate or “play doctor.” Believe me, we did not get play doctor kits. Despite my best efforts, I rarely even got a chance to peak at a baby boy having his diaper changed. When I finally did get my eyes on the prize, I came away thinking girls were plain and boys were fancy. Mother was so modest that when my brother and I were toddlers we bathed together in our underwear. I was probably in school before I bathed in the nude.
Pregnancy didn’t exist. Women “were expecting” instead, but that was mentioned in whispers only to ladies. I don’t know how men ever got the news. The television snapped off instantly if a woman went into labor. Had to get my sex education the way God intended, from my equally ignorant friends. I learned some amazing things from my friend Margaret Green. She matured early, getting breasts and starting her menses at ten. Until then, it hadn’t occurred to me that the same calamity might befall me.
Margaret eagerly shared her amalgam of misinformation with me. Women got pregnant (not expecting) when a man climbed on top of her in bed and peed on her. The baby breathed through the mother’s belly button. If she was submersed, the baby would suffocate. A girl could get pregnant sleeping with another girl. The baby had to be cut out of the mother. I’m sure there was much more. I just remember the important parts.
I must have been crazy. I went straight to more with Margaret’s wild tales, sure she was lying. Mother was so mad Margaret opened Pandora’s box. She had no choice but to give me the very most basic explanation. I was so disgusted upon learning the mysteries of life. “That’s awful. I am never getting married!” That was fine with Mother. However, I was relieved to find out that there would be no peeing.
I can’t imagine how my mother had five children as much as she disapproved of sex.
Cousin Bobo was footloose and fancy-free, unperturbed by the economic responsibilities of four children in three years. He doted on his child-bride, Inez, living quite happily with her and their family in an old unpainted, farm house on her mama’s place. Despite his aversion to a regular work schedule, he and Inez managed fine. There was no power to the house, so no bills, the wood stove and fireplace sufficing for heat and cooking. The house was abandoned when they moved in, so he tacked wire over the open windows to keep varmints out, shuttering the windows for bad weather. Mama was real proud he did the right thing and married Inez, so she wasn’t about to stir up trouble, especially after the young’uns started coming. Bobo plowed and planted Mama’s garden, later helping get the peas picked and corn cut. Except for the few days he spent plowing, and cutting firewood, he fished and hunted every day. He happily peddled watermelons and turnip greens out of his old ’49 Ford Truck. They never ran short of game or fish. Sometimes he’d help a neighbor butcher a beef or hog, bringing in extra meat. He wasn’t averse to helping family with a little painting or carpentry work from time to time, as long as it was understood that his labor included a few days’s hospitality for his family. He kept Mama’s freezer full. That along with Mama’s chickens and eggs, the cow’s milk and butter kept them going just fine. Getting clothes for the kids wasn’t a challenge. Inez was the youngest of six spectacularly fertile sisters. Their cousin’s hand-me-downs were plentiful. All those little blonde tykes lined up in overalls year round was awe-inspiring. Most of the time, they wore shirts under their overalls in winter. Plenty of old tennis shoes lay casually around, should any of the kids decide they needed footwear. Some even had mates. Size wasn’t an issue. Should a shoe be too big, it worked fine to slide-style and let it flop. The kids weren’t partial to shoes anyway, unless they were picking around in a trash dump with old cans or broken glass. Shoestrings were scarce, but I never noticed anybody really looking for any.
I loved it when Bobo, Inez, and the kids showed up. Mother wasn’t always so enthusiastic, figuring they had run out of groceries and needed a place to roost for a few days. They did seem more likely to show up in bad weather, when a warm house was a comfort. Sometimes they’d stay a few days with this relative, a few with that one, moving one before the tension got too thick.
Mother complained about relatives giving them gas money to help them down the road to their next hosts. I know I saw her slip Inez a little of her grocery money once, after Daddy went to work. They moved on. We ate gravy and biscuits till Daddy got paid the next Thursday.
to be continued
One of the most terrifying phrases to come out of the mouth of a a child is. “My mama/daddy said.”
A mom told her kindergartner, “I didn’t put a lunch in your backpack. You are going to be picked up before lunch.”
When the little guy got to school, he told his teacher,”I don’t have a lunch. I can’t eat at school.”
Four-year-old Hayley listened in on Mom and Grandma. Grandma realized she was in the middle of a story she didn’t want getting out. “Hayley, I don’t want you to repeat anything you hear us say.”
Reassuring Grandma she understood discretion, Hayley replied. “Don’t worry Grandma . Mama talks about you all the time and I don’t tell you!”
From a three-year old boy learning to potty from his dad. “Cool penis dad!”
The same boy exiting the bathroom: “There’s a lot of turds in there!”
My three-year-old son advising his father: Don’t let Baby Sister in the bathroom with you. She’ll pull your penis. Ain’t she rude!”
The same boy to an older deaf neighbor: “YOU CAN’T HEAR THUNDER!” Of course he’d heard this from his father.
From my daughter standing behind a portly lady in line at the grocery story. I gave her a look and shushed her when she tried to comment. The lady turned to walk away and my little one chimed out, “I sure was nice not to call her a big, old, fat lady, wasn’t I, Mommy?
My niece: “Boogers taste like pickles.” I told my daughter and my little grandson spoke to himself, “I like that girl.”
I told my first grade teacher, “My mama said she wouldn’t take a sick dog to Dr. Jones. She bristled, “I’ll have you know my father is a very good doctor!” I couldn’t wait to get home to tell Mother.
My mother often said, “If you have kids, you can’t have anything else.” Well, she was wrong. We had a new toilet seat. After installing it, Daddy looked around, stared us down, and threatened. “I’d better not see anybody’s initials on this seat!” Where did that come from? I’d never heard of anybody putting initials on a toilet seat.
I went about my business, that toilet seat and initials, foremost on my mind. I wrote LDS in my “Night Before Christmas” book, LDS in the sand under the big shade tree, scooped up some mud and wrote LDS on the dog house. Still unsatisfied, I heated the ice pick on a stove burner and burned LDS on a green Tupperware tumbler.
Feeling strangely unfulfilled and restless, I couldn’t think of a thing to do. Billy was off somewhere playing with Froggy. Mother and the baby were taking a nap, so if I stayed in the house, I had to be quiet. I slipped in the kitchen to see if there was any Kool Aid miraculously left in the pitcher. No luck. Dejected, I went to the bathroom.
There it was calling to me, pristine in its unblemished beauty. The new toilet seat!!! I sat down, my bare bottom luxuriating in its cool smoothness. I got up, locked the door, and turned the seat up. Making sure no one was looking through the window, I got Mother’s eyebrow pencil out of the medicine cabinet and wrote LDS in tiny letters where no one would ever see it. Terrified, I erased my crime. The finish was dull from pencil smears. My heart pounded! I was caught! I got tissue and buffed it off. Thank goodness the shine was back. Relieved, I sat on the side of the bathtub to catch my breath. A nail fell out of my pocket and clattered to the bottom of the tub. Never has the devil so possessed a soul. Grasping the nail, I scratched BRS, Billy’s initials, on the toilet seat. Horrified, at the enormity of my crime, I tiptoed past the room where Mother and the baby still slept. By this time, Billy and Froggy had gotten back. We were throwing mud balls at each other when I heard a shriek from the house. “BILLY RAY SWAIN!! You come here this minute!” I didn’t need to go in to know what was wrong. I heard “Spat! Spat! Spat!” and in a few minutes he was out, still snuffling.
“What happened?”
“Mother whooped me for putting my initials on the toilet seat. I told her I didn’t know how to write but she said, ‘Who else would put your initials on the toilet seat?’ “
How long could it be before she found the Tupperware?
We just got back from camping on the Gulf Coast. We had fun and I learned a couple of things. First of all, if you think you might fall and bust your fanny, carry your extra glasses. I was standing behind the trailer trying to wave Bud in as he backed the trailer up and Buzzy wrapped me in his leash, plopping me flat on my keester. I fell flat, banging right on my glasses. I hadn’t gotten in Bud’s line of vision yet, so he thought I’d wandered off, as I am prone to do. He continued backing up, but fortunately I was able to get out of the way before he flattened me.
Although the fall did kill my glasses, I escaped. I was worried whether I would have a black eye, but luckily I didn’t. If I had, I would have to have blacked both Bud’s eyes or I would have been ashamed to be seen when we met friends later. I was able to get the frames replaced, using the same lenses. What a relief. I had dreaded trying to get by with just reading glasses till I could get new ones made. I will never go off without a spare again.
Buzzy had a fine time camping as always. We patrolled the camp several times a day. He got to meet new dogs, see an alligator, smell the Gulf, roll in some different flavors of mud, walk on the beach, and sleep in the camper. His favorite part of camping is sitting on the bench seat between us at meals. He doesn’t get a place at the table at home.
Our life with Annie, our surly, farting Dalmatian was complicated by her partner in crime, Greg, the ever-present kid from across the street. I use ever-present in the strictest sense. Greg’s mom worked nights. In a casual relationship never addressed by any of us, Greg made a beeline to our house as soon as he got home every day, hit the pantry for a snack, and let Annie out of prison. Greg was well known for investigating our premises, keeping himself abreast of what all that was going on at our house, while he dawdled about, picking things up, questioning, “What’s this? When did you get this?” We’d chat about his day. Afterwards, he and Annie would go off on a ramble, since we lived in a rural neighborhood with many large wooded areas. They were a common sight, known all over the neighborhood.
At any rate, one afternoon he and Annie stumbled on a construction site, just as a human skull was unearthed. Naturally, the ensuing hub bub was tremendous. With law enforcement and news crews arriving, Greg and Annie managed to be front and center, part of the big story. Greg was ecstatic, carrying the news all over the neighborhood, taking full credit for the entire situation. Anxious to milk the situation for all it was worth, Greg made a hasty trip back to our house to retrieve a gag item of my daughter’s, a dummy arm and hand intended to hang from the trunk of a vehicle, giving the impression of a body is in the trunk.
Returning to the wooded area near the site of all the excitement, Greg tossed the “arm” to Annie, initiating her favorite game of “keepaway.” Annie burst from the woods, arm in her mouth, ripping through the yellow crime scene tape. Greg was right behind her, yelling his head off. It was like a scene out of a Monty Python movie. Annie, no novice, at being chased by shouting strangers, headed home, dragging the incriminating arm. Winded, she scratched at the back door, still clinging to her prize. Shortly, she was followed by Greg and a bevy of law enforcement officers, asking to see the arm. She’d hidden in the bedroom, reluctant to part with such a desirable prize, but I brought it out for their examination. I was so glad not to be Greg’s parent that day.
Oh, the skull turned out to be that of a Native American who’d probably died more than one hundred years before.
This story seems to be too complicated to be true, but it is. It looked like my mother had to tried to set my dad up but she was never organized enough for this. Daddy had worked graveyard shift, so was settling in for his day sleep. The last thing Daddy told her before lying down was that he was expecting a “man to come see him about a dog.” Knowing Mother had business to attend to that day, he was expecting the man to honk his horn to wake him.
Expecting Daddy to sleep a while, Mother took the opportunity to finish waxing the hall before leaving. Sure it would be dry before Daddy had to get up.
Her waxing done, Mother headed out the door. When she got to the end of the two-hundred-yard long driveway, Mother’s path was blocked by a complacent cow. Frustrated, Mother edged closer to cud-chewing old Bessie, who regarded Mother sagely. Bessie was unconcerned. Not to be bested by a cow, Mother laid down on the horn till Bessie got out of the way.
Meanwhile, back at the house Daddy lay lightly snoozing, mindful that he was listening for the horn-blowing signal of his friend. Hearing Mother’s distant horn blast, he jumped out of bed, struggled into his pants and launched down the recently waxed hall. It was slick as a gut. Head over heels, he slid the length of that hall on his butt, only to get to the window just in time to see Mother’s car disappearing in the distance. Muttering angrily, he headed back to bed.
Later that day, Mother arrived home just before Daddy’s visitor. Seating the man, she put the coffee on before going to rouse Daddy. Headed down the hall to wake him, she was surprised to see the wide unwaxed stretch right down the middle of the hall. The timing probably saved her life. When Daddy launched into the story of of the trap Mother had set and his perilous slide down the hall, his buddy laughed so hard at him, they all had a big laugh.
That’s probably the only thing that saved Mother’s life.
Original art by Kathleen Swain
Unless you’ve been cursed with a prissy, goody-two-shoes older sister, you couldn’t possibly appreciate this, so just go on with whatever you were doing. If you want to commiserate, jump right in. Phyllis was three years older than I. This put her just far enough ahead of me that all the teachers and Sunday School teachers were still raving about her performance. “Phyllis never misspelled a word on a test the whole year. Phyllis is the best student I had in all my twenty years of teaching. Phyllis is the neatest kid in class. Phyllis always reads her Sunday School Lesson and knows her memory verses.” It was all true. She worked on her homework from the time she got off the bus every day till Mother made her go to bed every night, copying it over rather than have an erasure.
I did my homework on the bus, on the way to school, if I could borrow some paper. The second day of first grade Miss Angie called me a blabbermouth and a scatterbrain. I was delighted till she sent a note home. My parents pointed out neither was a good thing. The only notes Phyllis ever got asked if she could be the lead in the school play, tutor slow kids, or be considered for sainthood. Mother had to chase the schoolbus to brush my hair. If we had pancakes for breakfast, my papers stuck to me all morning and dirt clung to the syrupy patches after recess. I never got the connection between being sticky and not washing up after breakfast.
It was bad enough that Mother tried to civilize me. After I started school, Phyllis was embarrassed about being related to “Messy Mayhem.” She started in telling Mother I needed to pull my socks up, brush my hair, not wipe my snotty nose on my sleeve, and most of all, not tell anyone I was related to her. She was a hotline home for anything that the teachers forgot to send a note about. It didn’t help our friendship.
Phyllis was always first in line to get in the door at church. I am surprised she didn’t have her own key. Sitting quietly and thoughtfully through sermons, she’d occasionally nod and mark passages in her Bible. The minister was sure she was headed for “Special Sevice.” Meanwhile, I sat next to Mother, barely aware of the minister’s drone, desperately trying to find interest, somewhere, anywhere. I liked the singing but it didn’t last long. The words didn’t make sense, but it sure beat the sermon. Once the sermon started, I’d start at the front and enumerate things: roses on hats, striped ties, bald men, sleepers, crying babies, kids who got to prowl in their mother’s purses, or the number of times the preacher said “Damn, Breast or Hell!”. Once in a while something interesting would happen, like pants or skirt stuck in a butt-crack, or a kid would get taken out for a spanking, but all this made for a mighty lean diet.
One glorious Sunday, the sun shone. As we filed out, I looked longingly at the lucky kids running wild in the parking lot. We had to stand decorously beside Mother and Daddy as he waxed eloquent, rubbing elbows with the deacons, whose august company he longed to join. As he discussed the merits of the sermon with Brother Cornell Poleman, a deacon with an unfortunate sinus infection, Brother Poleman pulled a big white hankie from his coat pocket and blew a disgusting snort in its general direction. Fortunately for Sister Poleman, she wouldn’t be dealing with that nasty hanky in Monday’s laundry. A giant yellow, green gelatinous gob of snot went airborn, landing right on Phyllis’s saintly, snowy, Southern Baptist forearm, where it quivered just a bit, before settling into its happy home. Her expression was priceless. Mr. Poleman grabbed her arm, rubbing the snot all over her forearm before she could extricate herself from his foul grip. She flew to the church bathroom to wash before joining the family waiting in the car. That snot trick had put a hasty end to all visiting. When she got home, she locked herself in the bathroom to scrub her arm with Comet. I enjoyed church that day.
My brother Billy certainly didn’t have to deal with comparisons to a saint when he followed three years behind me.
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