Category Archives: Childhood Memories/Terrors

Mama Never Told Me

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As a painfully shy teenager, my mother spent hours trying to teach me how to get a boy to ask me out. While Mom lived in fear that I would never go on a date, I lived in fear that I would.
The first thing she tried to teach me was how to bat my eyelashes. Evidently boys found this irresistible.
“When you’re talking to a boy,” she said as we stood in front of the bathroom mirror. “Tilt your chin down and look up through your lashes. Now, blink several times in a row.”
I looked like a bobble head with an eye infection.
The next thing she tried was to shorten all my skirts. She had a friend lug her sewing machine over to our house. I stood in on a chair in the middle of the dining room and Mom gauged how short my skirt should be. “Put your arms down by your sides,” she said. “I think we should mark it at the tips of your fingers.”
“Dad,” I shouted. “Help me out here, would you?”
His only comment as he walked out to the safety of the barn, was “You have to have the right bait if you want to catch a fish.”
Mom’s friend diligently stitched up the hems on all my dresses.
At school I walked from class to class hugging the walls, terrorized of exposing myself but Mom’s idea worked. A boy asked me out.
“And he’s a senior,” Mom bragged to her friends.
He took me to the homecoming dance where I refused every request to move toward the gyrating in the middle of the gym. I calculated that his height would require me to move my arms above shoulder level which would reveal my backside to the entire school.
To my relief (and probably his) we left early. When we were fifty yards from the driveway the engine went dead and the lights went out. We rolled to a stop in front of my house.
“Is there something wrong with your car?” I asked.
He leaned across the seat toward me, lips puckered. I backed up against the door. My mind raced through everything Mom had coached me to do, but the coaching sessions didn’t cover kissing.
“Just a minute. I have to ask my Mom what to do next.” I jumped out of the car and ran to the house. He was gone before I’d made it to the front door.

Missed Manners

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I found this note, in my mother’s handwriting, as I was digging through a box that belonged to my grandmother. I swear, that woman can still make me feel guilty.

My grandmother, “Don’t you dare call me Grandma,” Nellie, had one goal in life — to teach her wild grandchildren to have good manners. As a child, I sat through hours of angst-ridden instructions on the proper handling of silverware and napkins. A lesson on how to hold your glass properly so as not to end up with a milk mustache seemed particularly useless. My only concern at home on the farm with my sister and brothers was how to obtain the actual milk before they did.

One Thanksgiving dinner Grandmother Nellie assigned me the chair to her right to “control Teresa’s fidgeting,” as she said. She spent the meal correcting my every move. “Pass the food from left to right. Don’t gulp your water, sip it. Quit fidgeting!” Toward the end of the meal she whispered between gritted teeth, “Get your elbows off the table..now!”

I yanked my arms away and slid my elbows through the slats in the back of the chair, where they promptly got stuck. I sat quietly through the rest of the meal. My arms were tucked tight against my sides, my elbows held firmly from behind by the hateful chair slats. I politely declined any extra food offered to me and although Grandmother expressed her unhappiness at the food left on my plate, she did praise me for sitting so upright and proper.

People began to notice something was wrong when I left the dessert, angel food cake (my favorite) untouched on my plate. Grandmother immediately demanded that I remove my elbows from the chair but I could not get them free. I’m not sure when the tears started, probably when my older brother suggested we cut off my arms.

Disgusted with the entire scene, Grandmother marched into her bedroom and returned with her face cream. She slathered up each of my elbows and they finally slid free. She hurried to the kitchen and returned with a soft dishtowel. Grandmother knelt down and murmured, “Oh dear, I hope there’s no damage,” as she gently wiped the greasy face cream from the slats of her chair.

Thanks to Grandmother Nellie, I am comfortable at any formal gathering. I know how to use the proper fork and which direction to pass the food. I can even drink a foamy latte without getting a milk mustache. And my elbows? They’re right where they belong. Safely resting on the table.