Monday, March 15, 2010

The Definition of Confusion

When my children were still in school, they used to visit their grandparents on school holidays. I would drive halfway to Pensacola to meet my mother and place my children in her care. The first few days always seemed like bliss and then the house gradually seemed way too quiet. By the time I would pick up my children, I was more than ready to have them come home again. I welcomed that deafening chaos.

My mother was always rather rigid while I was growing up and had a very diplomatic way of handling punishment. If the guilty party didn't confess the first time when we were asked who did it, we all suffered the consequences. As I grew older and eventually became a parent myself, the woman who raised me seemed to change. She got soft in her old age! Had I broken her spirit? Possibly! But each time my children would rave on about the fun-loving person who they perceived their grandmother to be, I knew it wasn't the same person who raised me. My mother was proof that aliens do exist! Ask anyone from my old neighborhood! They knew my mother was a force to be reckoned with. Her voice alone could raise the dead.

Each time my children would go for a visit, it took weeks before I could straighten them out. My mother waited on them hand and foot and made them do nothing but fun things while they visited her. When they came home sassy and quite lazy, I would want to pull my hair out. One time while driving home, my children seemed quite mesmerized by a joke book one of them had gotten while in Pensacola. One of the visiting rituals was to take my three children (her angelic grandchildren) to Hawsey's, a used bookstore and let them each purchase a large paper bag full of books to read.

Since they were quiet on our trip home and this was an oddity, I tried to engage them in conversation only to be told they were reading jokes. That explained the occasional chuckle I heard from the backseat. I asked them to read aloud some of the jokes. My youngest child, Matthew spoke up and said he would read one. Although he was only 7 at the time, his reading skills were quite advanced for someone his age. As Matthew read, I almost drove off the road.

Whats' the definition of "confusion"?
Twenty blind lesbians in a fish market!

What? Now, with glee they started reading more jokes from the book until I asked them where they got the book. In unison...HAWSEY'S! And your grandmother let you buy that? Well, she never screened the books that were bought, so the book titled Truly Tasteless Jokes was easily purchased by my son, Daniel (age 9). When they all went on to recite the dirty little ditties my mother had taught them I knew she had lost her mind or maybe the rules that apply to being a parent were different from those being a grandparent. It definitely was a gotcha moment lovingly given to me by my mother. To this day, my mother just smiles innocently when this story is told.




An example of one of the my mother's ditties:


A flock of birds
Chocked full of tirds
Flew over my father's castle
They stretched their necks
And shit a peck
Then closed up their assholes.

Gratitude statement: I'm thankful I don't live in a castle near a fish market.

7 comments:

  1. those were the good old days with grandma..... i sure do miss them! I still go to Hawsey's and the same ladies still run the place and believe it or not the remember me as well.....scary!

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  2. I sure would like to see her a little livier than she is now. She actually laughed when I came pen and paper in hand and asked her to tell me that ditty about the flock of birds.

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  3. I think the grandmother thing might be pretty common. I thought that my Grandmother was one of the sweetest people that I ever knew but my mother claimed she was always awful to her when she was growing up. Different roles I guess foster different behavior.

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  4. AHA! Here you are! Glad your blogging I miss reading your crazy brilliant mind. I need to get a profile on here and do the same. Will follow through with that as soon as I can tear myself away from school for a bit...I'm SOOO busy...*sigh* Oh well, keeps me outta trouble? Nah....haha.
    Thanks for leting me know you are here.

    ~Melissa

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  5. Melissa, I'm so glad to see you have finally come up for air. I look forward to hearing from you...if you're still on Yahoo Messenger give me a holler when you get some free time (red_kitten1)

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  6. Awesome . . . Hawsey's is still one of my favorite ways to waste a day.

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