Tag Archives: Family

I Can’t Believe She Threw Me Under The Bus

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Running Away to Aunt Lorena’s House

I took a drive to Crazie Town last week to visit my Aunt Betty Lou in her nursing home.

Every few months her facility schedules a family care meeting.  It’s an opportunity for them to explain how their $7,000 a month fee is being used to make my aunt’s life better.  The meeting is good, because if you ask her, they use the money to find new and interesting ways to irritate her.

I walked into her room to find her sitting in her wheelchair, arms crossed across her chest and a major pout on her face.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I told them I didn’t want to use the walker, so they deserved it,” she said.

“Uh, oh.  Deserved what?”

“That woman came in to help me to the bathroom and the whole time I was telling her I didn’t want to use the walker, but she said (and here my aunt scrunches up her face and talks like a baby) ‘Your family says you’re supposed to use the walker.’  So, I didn’t really have a choice, did I?”

Now my face was scrunched up.  “And what choice was that?”

“I threw my walker across the room.”

I chuckled.  I mean really, what’s funnier than a tiny old woman throwing a temper tantrum?

“Come on,” I said.  “We better get to the meeting.”  I let Aunt Betty Lou stay in her wheelchair (I’m no dummy) and rolled her into the conference room, which was filled with staff from the facility.  Immediately she assumed the arms-crossed, defensive position.

When we all settled in, the head nurse smiled at my aunt and asked, “How are you?”

Betty Lou snorted and then replied, “How am I supposed to know what day it is?”

“No.  I said, How ARE you?”

My aunt paused, looked at the ceiling and then lowered her gaze.  “I don’t know how old I am, but I was born in 1926!”

Aunt Betty Lou sat quietly through the rest of the meeting while they talked over her, telling me that “Miss Betty” liked movies but hated bingo, she loved having dessert with dinner then often came back later for a second helping and that she’d gotten into a bit of a kerfuffle with another resident when the woman had tried to cut in line for a manicure.

Flipping through pages and pages of documentation, the nurse noticed there was an item left blank on her form.  She leaned across the table and shouted, “Betty, do you brush your own teeth?”

Aunt Betty Lou paused and looked around the room in terror.  “Well…I, well…”  And then her gaze landed on me and her eyes lit up.  She reached out, pointed a crooked finger my way and said, “Teresa ran away from home.”

A room full of accusing eyes turned my way (well, except for Aunt Betty Lou’s.  Her eyes were filled with satisfaction.)  I couldn’t believe she’d throw me under the bus like that.

I was six-years-old and really mad at my mom, so I packed up my little suitcase – yes, family, I’m going to tell the truth  (for some reason, they love this part of the story) – I packed my suitcase with every pair of underwear I owned.  That was it.  No clothes.  Just underwear.

“I’m going to Aunt Lorena’s house,” I said.  “Because she loves me.” I stomped off, up the driveway and out onto the dirt road in front of our house.

I’d made about 10 yards when Mom came out onto the porch.

“You know,” she said.  “It’s a long walk to Lorena’s house.  Maybe you should eat some lunch before you go.”

I stopped walking but didn’t turn around.

“We’re having some of Betty Lou’s fried chicken and mashed potatoes,” Mom said and then I heard the squeal of the screen door as it opened and the sharp bang as it slammed shut.  Within two minutes I was back inside, sitting at the table on my chair stacked with telephone books, shoveling mashed potatoes into my mouth.

As I sat in the nursing home looking around at those accusing faces I thought for one second about throwing Aunt Betty Lou under the bus by bringing up the walker-tossing event.  But I realized that, much like a 6-year-old, an 86-year-old just needs to throw an old-fashioned temper tantrum once in a while.

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Of Mice and Friends.

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Too Late for Sorry

There’s nothing like a couple of close friends to smack you down off your high horse.

Kerry, Bob and I were sitting around, sharing our dislike of household pests.  Kerry and I agreed that spiders are evil incarnate and deserve all of our screeching and terror.  Over the years I’ve mellowed enough to understand they have just as much right to the world as I do, they just don’t have a right to cross my threshold.

I don’t have a particular problem with mice.  Growing up on a farm we had our fair share of them.  I learned to enter the kitchen at night by first stomping my feet loudly and then turning on the light.  Occasionally I’d see a little shadow darting away but I never climbed up on a table screaming in terror.

I’ve even had some close encounters with a snake or two.  We once found one snoozing comfortably behind the encyclopedias in the bookcase.  And, in fact, the other day I stopped my car in the road so a snake could safely travel to the other side.

And then, Kerry attempted to top my stories of Earth Mother by telling us that her Zen-like husband had recently corralled a spider the size of a toaster that was living inside the drain of their bathroom sink.  He carefully carried it to the window and released it outside.

Not to be outdone in the Zen-like story department, I shared the following anecdote.

A few years ago my younger brother, Larry, and I rented a vacation home together.  As we sat at the table eating breakfast, a disturbing rustling sound came from under the sink.  We tiptoed over and with a long wooden spoon opened the cabinet door.  There we saw a very live mouse fighting to free his feet from a sticky trap.

“Poor thing.  He’ll starve to death,” I said.   We stood staring at the struggling creature and then I said, “We’ll have to drown him.”

I continued sharing my heroic story with my friends by explaining that we got a trash can and filled it with water and then picked up the little mouse and dropped him in. Unfortunately he landed in such a way that the sticky trap acted like a raft and he bobbed around on top of the water while Larry and I squealed stood quietly assessing the situation.  “We’re going to have to hold him under water,” I said.  And we did.

This is where I looked around the room expecting praise from my friends for my strength of character to put this poor little mouse out of its misery.  Instead they shouted their horror at my cruel behavior.  “But, what would you have done?” I asked.

“Step on him,” Bob said.

Step on him?  How is that better than drowning him?

“Peel him off the sticky trap,” Kerry suggested.

The whole point of the sticky trap is that you can’t peel them off.  I guess I could have cut the trap up, leaving little flip-flops for his feet, but unfortunately I didn’t think of that at the time.

So, here I sit.  Ready for your judgment.  Hero or Villain?  You decide.

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