In our family it was fashionable, or at least mildly acceptable, for hubbies to jocularly refer to their wives as "old bags". Both my uncle Charley and my dad did that sometimes so I considered it normal and routine.
At some point when I was a little older than Weston and Paloma are now (4 ½), maybe 6, I decided to try it myself. Once. You know the boulders along one edge of the back yard? Well, they got there after being toted and reconfigured from a rock mound in the middle of the front yard lawn.
When I uttered those fateful words Ma was like "Whaaat?! You little ...." Without knowing exactly what was wrong, and being a clever little boy, I sensed serious trouble here and took off running out the front door and down the steps, naively assuming I could easily outrun the "old bag". She closed fast and chased me around that rockery a couple of times before catching me by the hair with, I thought, a few unnecessary extra yanks. Didn't know whether fear, pain or surprise was the called for reaction of the moment. Anyway, she became "Mama" again right away and stayed so till my teen years when she graduated to "Ma". I had a hand in that, too.
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment