After 39¾ years...

12.22.2008

I've always bragged, been smug, about having never locked myself out of either my house or my car.

I can't say that anymore.

This morning I went out and about to run some errands. The first stop was the gas station, as I was under ¼ tank and have some driving to do this week. After filling up the tank, I went across the street to the bank to deposit various amounts of moolah that had been coming in over the past couple of weeks. From there I went to the post office to drop off 3 bills in the post office parcel receptacle box. That's where things went wrong.

I drove up to the post office and had to get out to walk the 15 feet to the box. It was 20° and I hadn't driven very far from the gas station and bank, and it was going to take all of 30 seconds to drop off the mail, so I decided to leave the car running (don't get ahead!). I hop out, close the door, drop off the mail, and go back to the car. I pull on the handle. Nothing. Just in case anybody's looking I try it 2 more times. I look down, realizing the car door is locked. The motor is running. My wallet and cell phone are sitting inside the car. There's a touchpad combination lock on the door I've never touched, much less memorized the number for.

Shit.

I go inside the post office, mainly because I don't know what else to do. This is a small post office, and as such the woman working leaves at 11:00 for lunch. I walk in at 10:59. There are 3 of us in line and she looks at me and asks if there's anything I need (evidently I was looking pretty pitiful). "I've managed to lock my keys in the car with the motor running and I have no idea what to do." You can see the mix of sympathy and suppression of a chuckle as she tells me she doesn't know what to do either, but there's a mechanic next door that might have a slim-jim they can use to open the door. I thank her and head to the mechanic next door to repeat my story. It sounds like they've heard this story plenty of times, and soon the girl behind the counter grabs a bag of tools and we go back to my car.

As she starts to perform her magic, a woman in a van pulls up to drop off her mail and notices my predicament. "Locked out? Oh, and your motor's still running! At least the gas prices have come down some." She starts to get back in her van. Her door won't open. She walks around and tries the other doors, but they're all locked. "I don't believe it." She locked herself out, too. None of us could help it, but we all started to laugh a little. She was able to call her husband to come bring the spare set of keys, so she didn't need my lock picking maiden.

After about 20 minutes, she was able to get my door open and I was able to get back inside to my keys, cell phone, wallet, and everything else that makes me a member of modern society. She didn't charge me anything, but I slipped her a $20 out of thanks and relief. The other woman's husband showed up with the spare key and undoubtedly got to hear the story from his wife.

Now I'm going to go lookup my keypad combination, although I may never let go of those keys again.

Permalink random

Karate Mom

12.16.2008

I've been digging through some boxes trying to find a picture, and I finally came across it.

I remember taking karate when we lived in the trailer park outside of Florence, so this pic would be sometime between 3rd and 6th grades. I want to make it around 1979, so that's what I'm going to do.

The class was taught by one of the guys who lived in the park who had developed his own karate style - a mash-up of styles he had learned along with some Bruce Lee inspired moves. Mainly he was an excuse to get all the kids in the park together and teach a little discipline. A couple of Moms joined us in the class in the beginning, and mine was one of the gaggle.

Being the young rebel that I was, I didn't want a black gi or a white gi. I looked in the catalog and saw a red gi, so that's what I got. What the hell was I thinking? Chunky 10 year old kicking and punching in a set of red pajamas.

Looking back, I'm not sure how long Mom stuck with the karate. I got a yellow belt and green belt before quitting, and I think there were 2 levels of yellow belt. I don't remember how long there was between belt tests, so that's not a very good measurement. Just under 4 years ago I took a karate class with Jerry and Keith, and stuck with it until I advanced enough that my knees couldn't take the twisting and pounding that were required for the moves. Oddly enough, I had made it once again to green belt, although Leonard was ready to promote me to the next level (I think that's blue belt). I had missed a lot of classes due to my knees and back being messed up, so I didn't feel like I had really earned another belt promotion.

I keep telling myself I'll go back one day, and maybe I will. Until then, I can always look back at kicking Mom's ass when I was 10! If only we didn't have those huge smiles when we were kicking asses.

Permalink mom

Post Xmas Party Sniffles

12.14.2008

This past Saturday was the Spiritus Christmas Party which I attended with Gina. The previous Saturday was the Westar Christmas Party which I attended with Gina.

I have a sinus cold and have been sniffling and sneezing my fool head off for two days. Gina's been doing her best to take care of me. She's a sweetie.

I had a similar cold about this time last year. Since it's not time to watch A Christmas Story I've instead been watching Star Wars (Episodes 1-3) while convalescing on the couch. It's times like this that having an expansive movie library pays off.

Permalink

My college care package

12.12.2008

In the Spring (I think) of '88, I was away living the college life with Jer at Birmingham-Southern College, a place I had no right to be but I wouldn't take anything for the people I met there. But I digress. I had finally reached the stage where I didn't come home every weekend - I think I might come back home once a month by that time. One afternoon I made my way to my mailbox and found a large, puffy envelope awaiting me with "Mom" as the return address. I opened the envelope and pulled out a pale pink shirt!

Note 1: It was the 80's. We watched Miami Vice. Pink shirts for guys were cool.

Note 2: All my life Mom has sewed (sewn?). She always wanted to make me clothes, mainly because it was cheaper than buying them. When I was 18/19 I worked out semi-regularly and had not put in the time and effort to develop the gut I lug around now. I've always had broad shoulders, and finding a shirt to fit said shoulders was difficult. Mom took it upon herself to drag me into helping her construct a shirt pattern that would actually fit me. It took the better part of a year and parts of 5 or 6 patterns to make the shirt I wanted, but we finally got it together. to top it off, I was particular about the type and weight of the fabric of the shirts I would wear - a medium weight cotton is what I preferred. Hey, if Mom's going to make me help her then she's got to pay the price!

... and now back to our 20 year old story ...

I got back to the dorm room and looked at the shirt. Cool, a new shirt from the pattern me and Mom made! Button-up, button collar, oversized sleeves. Two big chest pockets. I pulled it on and started to button it up when I stopped.

The buttons were on the wrong side.

Mom had just made me a pale pink womens shirt.

I went directly to the phone and called up Mom. "Hey Mom, I got the shirt!"

"It already got there? That's good. Do you like it?"

"Uhm, yeah. Ah, did you know the buttons are on the wrong side?"

You could hear the astonishment in Mom's voice. "Really? No! I've been doing so many womens clothes I just never thought about it. I'm sorry!"

"That's ok, I don't think that'll keep me from wearing it."

I wore that shirt way past the cancellation of Miami Vice. I wore it until there were holes in it to where I couldn't wear it anymore. Nobody ever noticed that the buttons were on the wrong side (unless I told them, accompanied by this very story most of the time). If anybody had noticed, it wouldn't have mattered a bit.

Permalink mom

Playing along

12.11.2008

Mom was also one of the people that I never felt I had to talk down to. Yeah, sure, I was smarter than her and we both knew it (I'm not conceited, just showing off how good Mom raised me!), but often times I think Mom would say something to set me up for a smart comeback that would make us both chuckle. At least half the time I would make something up, and I think she would go along with it just to see how long she could fool me back.

Mom's anxiety meds would lead to some short-term memory loss, usually around 20-40 minutes after taking them she would get frustrated for not remembering something silly, which would in turn make her a little anxious. One of the first things I would do when I went to see Mom would be to ask her what day it was. In the beginning she usually got it wrong as she had no way to keep up with time since she was in the RV the majority of the day. The weather had been getting colder and the days were more overcast, so mornings and evening looked deceptively similar when you're taking a lot of naps and get awakened to take some scheduled meds.

There were 4 or 5 of us taking turns staying with and helping out Mom. She had started to overcome her confusion on what day it was by remembering the schedule that certain people were on. I would show up on Saturday and head back home on Sunday, so when Mom first say me and I would ask her what day it was, she was pretty sure "Saturday" was the right answer. After a couple of times of seeing she had that figured out, I started throwing in "morning or night" which she managed to figure out most of the time, too. Finally I asked her "ok, so what month is it?" and she would figure out the right month.

Silly little questions, but she would play along with me.

Sometimes Mom would just say things that would make you wonder what was going on in her head - maybe she was half asleep and dreaming? More often than not these were little things that had gotten her mental schedule out of whack since she may have been taking a nap or some such. One afternoon Terry had left to go to Wal-Mart, and 15 minutes later Mom asked me if Terry was supposed to get back from work that night. I would explain that he wasn't at work, just at Wal-Mart, and you could see the frustration in her face that said "I knew that".

My favorite one of those (whatever it should be called) was one Sunday morning when Mom woke up 30 minutes before the time to take her morning meds. She got up and was drinking some Ensure. As i sat down on the bed next to her she looked at me and asked "Did everybody show up for the wedding?"

"What wedding, Mom?" I asked.

She closed her eyes and shook her head a couple of times. "The wedding that didn't happen." You could see the silent "Duh" added by her eyes as she went back to her Ensure."

"It's not as much fun if you don't play along, Ma". I should have made up something really good about that wedding!

Permalink mom