Monday, January 16, 2012

Rudimentary representation

One of my all time favorite people is a school teacher.  I went to school with my dear friend to help her out for a day.  One of her students parents unexpectedly stopped by to talk to her about the most recent homework assignment.  The concerned parent brought the assignment in with her and put it on the desk.  The assignment was to draw a picture of your parent at work.  In the drawing I saw a woman vaguely resembling the parent standing before me.  In the picture she was standing next to a long thin stick with her arm raised and hand holding the stick.  Below her, the child drew about 4 or 5 people holding up little dollar bills.  Across the top of the picture the child wrote, 'My Mommy loves making people happy.'  I sat there stunned, trying to determine if I could look up at the parent without laughing.  My friend came back and the parent began to explain the picture.  She said, 'I work at Home Depot.  There was a big snow storm coming and everyone wanted to buy snow shovels and we quickly ran out.  I went to the back to just in case there were any more and I found 1 last shovel.  When I brought it out there were people crowding around me waving money at me to get the shovel.  I am not a stripper, I don't think there is anything wrong with being a stripper.  I just wanted to clear that up.  Also, I will definitely make sure to look at my child's homework from now on.'  My friend was quick to put the troubled mommy at ease, assuring her she receives a lot of homework that appears questionable at first glance.  After the parent left I quietly told my friend the child deserves an A+.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Intoxicated salutations

Last year on the 31st day of December I went to my middle brother's house to celebrate the New Year.  We began drinking a little earlier than we normally do and my tolerance to alcohol is quite limited.  I am proud to say that I did manage to stay awake until midnight.  Right at midnight each year I typically send a 'Happy New Year!' mass text to my friends, however this time I sent majority of the contacts in my phone a mass text that read 'Happy Birthday!' As you can imagine my friends had a very good time teasing me. 

Scared straight (into the wall)

Late one night while laying in my bed I was thinking about the movie Paranormal Activity and how it would be if we had similar haunting occurring in our home.  My imagination is pretty vivid so it wasn't long before I realized I was kind of scared.  I decided to go downstairs and ask Bernie if she wanted to watch a scary movie.  Bernie just finished folding her laundry & ready to take it upstairs heard me coming.  Instead of coming around the corner, Bernie stood just a few steps inside the family room and waited for me to enter. I came down the stairs and around the corner to see Bernie standing there kind of slumped - now remember, it is pretty late at night and we are both in our pajamas, with our hair disheveled, and pretty tired.  I walk around the corner to see Bernie standing there and she looked very similar to the scary girl in the movie.  I screamed and turned to run, unfortunately I turned the wrong way and ran right into the wall.  Bernie is now laughing so hard she is in tears, she said, 'I heard you coming so I stood here so I wouldn't scare you.'  I said, 'Well you are doing a crappy job NOT scaring me!' 

Pow pows

One night my best friend Lexi agreed to babysit a rambunctious little 2 year old.  This child's behavior was less than desirable.  The child did the exact opposite of everything Lexi told him to do.  At one point during the night the child thought I was his own personal human jungle gym, climbing and jumping all over me.  I held the child in my lap, looking very closely at his scalp I moved some of his hair to the side, sighed and said, 'Oh man, so close' then let the child go back to his running and jumping.  Lexi saw me do this and asked, 'What was that?' I said, 'I was looking for 666 on his head' she laughed and said, 'What did you see?' I said '665 which is very close and explains a lot'.  Finally, the hellion's bedtime came, Lexi put the child in the bed and 2 minutes later he was out of the bed.  Lexi picked him up, carried him back to bed.  Of course the child was right back up.  This routine repeated itself about 5 or 6 times.  Lexi's patience had now run out, she picked him up, put him into the bed, tucked him in, looked down at the child & said 'If you get out of this bed one more time (she balled 1 hand into a fist and punched it into the palm of her other hand) POW POWS!'  I proceeded to laugh hysterically because I know Lexi would never ever harm anyone in any way, especially a child, but she did make it sound convincing.  I asked my poor flustered Lexi exactly what chapter in the good parenting handbook she found her tactics.  However we did not see him again the rest of the night.  Lexi also never agreed to watch this child ever again. 

God Bless you Happy

I don't go to Church as often as I should but when I do go, it is definitely time well spent.  The services at our Church are typically quiet and reserved.  This week I observed a very cute Autistic man, he had a big smile on his face and it was obvious he was filled with the love of God.  For the purposes of telling this story I will refer to him as Happy.  At various times during the service he shouted AMEN!  His father continuously did his best to quiet him down.  At one point during the service there was a fussy child that was getting louder by the minute.  Happy knew just how to quiet the child, he stood up, looked directly at the child and said "Hey! Knock it off!"  His father quickly sat him down and politely apologized to the child's mother.  In Happy's defence, the child was now quiet.  So I say - mission accomplished.  When the time came to share the peace, simply saying 'Peace be with you' and shaking hands was not enough for our Happy.  He gave as many people as possible a hand shake, hug, and kiss on the cheek.  There was one lady that he was very eager to share the peace with, she received a hand shake, 2 hugs, and three kisses.  I guess Happy thought she deserved an extra piece!  My favorite part of 'The Happy Show' was when we came to the end of a rather extensive and very quiet prayer, most of us said 'Amen', Happy very loudly and enthusiastically shouted 'I'll drink to that!'