Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Oh, nuts!

I am sure all of us have had these moments. Like forgetting something important you needed for work, finishing a project just to find you have forgotten an important detail or making a bad decision about even a simple task! When I was very young some of my biggest Oh nuts moments were connected to a red paddle that was attached to the end of my mother's hand. It began it's life being a toy and ended up making contact with my butt instead of the ball that was originally attached to the paddle by a thin elastic string. I remember my sister and I ran across mothers red paddle and we took it upon ourselves to hide the hideous thing from mom up in the attic under some insulation. Our parents left us alone for a couple of hours one evening. The house had just had some remodeling work done and we had been given fair warning to be careful so that the new freshly painted rooms would remain that way. We planned on just spending the evening watching tv but we were overcome with the need for snacks. First we made hot chocolate. We set up tv trays in the new living room assuring ourselves that we had a place to set the snacks where we could NEATLY eat them. My sister was older so she was in charge. She could use the stove so she quickly whipped up a batch of divinity serving both of us a small plate of the scrumptious dessert. She had garnished the plate with beautiful green grapes. That's when things got crazy. She reached over to my tv tray, wadded my candy in a ball, added some grapes then stuffed it into my hot chocolate. A fine mess she had constructed from my treats. I instantly got angry, withdrew the mess from my cup and threw the sticky,chocolatity ball of divinity at her and of course missed hitting her entirely, but I did not miss hitting the freshly painted wall. Chaos insued and before we knew the sticky mess was from the ceiling to floor. The dilemma seemed overwhelming but we finally made amends and together we cleaned up the mess. We were in bed when our parents got home. The next morning we were called downstairs by our dad and he and our mother were standing in the brand newly constructed living room. Of course they asked what we had done the night before to which we both relied "nothing". One look at mom and we knew we were in trouble but we also knew the red paddle was safely tucked under insulation in the attic. Imagine our surprise when dad pointed to all the chocolate sticky spots we had overlooked on the ceiling. We were both ashamed of ourselves for lying. Mom slipped into there bedroom and came back out into the living room, one hand behind her back. Now this is where our "oh nuts" moment appeared as mom produced the red paddle from behind her back just for this special occasion. I don't remember what ever happened to the paddle. Maybe we out grew it or maybe our dad disposed of the nasty thing. He never spanked any of us and I believe when mom did, he felt our pain. Never ever, under any circumstances underestimate a mother.

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