Driving & Other Dilemmas - Bloopers & Mistakes

Have you ever put a key into a lock that didn’t work? One of my daughters and I were discussing the many times we’ve encountered just that problem. Sometimes it’s with cars (as when we attempt to force our keys into what turns out to be somebody else’s car), and sometimes it happens with houses.

One year I moved into an apartment complex with numerous buildings that all looked exactly alike. A friend and I had gone out for a couple of drinks (hmm, come to think of it, that might have contributed to the problem), and she let me off at my new apartment.

“I’ll stay here until I see the door open,” she offered as a measure of protection (I have always had amazing friends). She watched me climb the stairs, walk down the long outdoor hallway, stand before my door, and fidget with the lock.

After numerous attempts I looked over at her and saw her raise both palms upward and shrug her shoulders. I did the same. After more attempts, I walked down the long hallway, down the steps, and right back into her car.

“What do you want to do?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I thought out loud. “Maybe my key isn’t working.”

Turns out I lived one building to the west.

My daughter’s favorite driving story is about the time she and a couple of friends were driving one friend home after a party. They pulled into the driveway and when Sema didn’t open the door, they said, “Sema, you’re home – get out!”

“But this isn’t my house,” she argued.

“YES! It is, now open the door.” Reluctantly Sema left the car and walked up to the front door where she found herself standing face to face with her next-door neighbor at 2 o’clock in the morning, saying the only thing she could think to say, “Have you seen my brother?”

But the highlight of my driving experiences is one of those déjà vu moments that reminded me of the time I was taking driver’s ed in high school. The instructor and two other students were male. I was the only female.

In those days, wheels didn’t return to their original position, so when I made a right turn, I ended up speeding through a field directly into the path of a house. Every time the instructor yelled, “BRAKES! BRAKES!” I accelerated more and more. When I saw the whites of the eyes of the family seated at their breakfast table staring at me with mouths agape, something snapped inside me and I slammed on the breaks just in time to see the two other students cowering in embarrassment on the floor of the back seat.

And so here I was, decades later, working for a home party company heading into the country to find – from the driving directions that included no street names – landmarks such as poles, statues, and baskets. I was never very good at seeing in the dark, and this brand new street had no lights yet. I had to continuously vacate my car and walk up to each house just to locate the address.

Finally, I thought I had it figured out and I pulled my car directly in front of what I thought would be the correct house. For reasons I couldn’t understand, I saw the father wrap his arms around his children and rush them into the house. When I came to a stop, I noticed the circular driveway in front of me running to my left and to my right. Too bad I didn’t see it before I drove across their newly landscaped lawn.

(photo of Nicolas Cage – "this isn't my house" in The Family Man is from IMDB – Internet Movie Data Base)

The Day My Mommy Lied To Me

Anybody who knows me knows I hate liver (and yes, I can see my mom rolling her eyes already in memory of the horrible wretched day she got caught lying).

But I would like to emphasize my hatred of liver by saying I detest it so much that if it were the last food on Earth and I HAD to eat it, I would cut it up into tiny pea-sized bullets and shoot them down my throat with squirt guns filled with enough water to prevent the gag reflex from expelling the "nutritious" (gag gag) most awful tasting meat on the planet. And it's not even meat – it's an organ! (oh gag again)

So now that you have the backdrop for the BIG LIE, let me emphasize once more my HATRED of liver. Got it? Good. Because this is what happened on the day I saw what looked like liver in a pan on the stove in our kitchen – LIVER!

"It's NOT liver," my mom lied.

"I know what liver looks like. And THAT is liver. It even smells like liver."

"Well, it's not. It's a new meat called revil."

"There is no such thing as revil," I told her.

"Well, obviously, there is, because we're eating it," she told me.

Hmm. As the smell of the organ filled the house, I squinted my eyes, tapped my finger to my chin, and pondered the situation. I was raised Catholic by a Catholic mom. Therefore, what my mom was telling me must be true, because good Catholics never lie. And good moms never lie to their children. So I will try this "revil" that I don't believe is really revil, because I am a good daughter.

When it was time for dinner, my two sisters and I sat down at the table gawking at the inside of some poor dead animal sprawled out on our plates. We looked first at each other, and then at our mother, wondering if we should trust her.

"Taste it," she commanded.

I placed the tip of my tongue on the foul substance as I looked at my mother in horror. "It tastes like liver," I said, seething. And then realization grasped me by the throat. "(Gasp!) It is liver. You LIED to us!"

My sisters and I were so shocked, our swallowing reflexes locked up. But we were even more shocked when she revealed to us that revil was liver spelled backwards. "So really," mom said, "it wasn't a lie."

Knowing how much my mother disdains certain foods, one day soon I'm going to invite her over for some "new" foods – tunaep rettub sandwiches with a side order of saep and a dessert of tunococ pie.

(I love you, Mom)

Hey, Soup!

At times like these I wish I had written down EVERYTHING my children and grandchildren said throughout their lives, though I'm sure my kids will find some of the funny sayings and memories when they sift through the contents of my numerous trunks after I'm gone. But today, the blog is – once again – about Kaden.

My son and daughter-in-law are still in town and were at my home when my daughter's mother-in-law stopped by to see her (and a couple of my other) grandchildren, Audrey and Nolan. Kaden didn't remember meeting her and asked her what her name was.

"Sue," she responded.

"Soup?" Kaden asked.

"No, Sue."

"Soup?"

"S-U-E," she said slowly so my 4-year-old grandson could hear her better.

To which Kaden responded, "I'll just call you Soup."

Shortly after, we heard, "Hey, Soup, wanna see me look cool?"

"Sure," Sue said, smiling.

Kaden donned a brimmed hat. After she acknowledged his coolness, Kaden then turned the cap around.

"Know what I look like now, Soup?"

"No, Kaden, what do you look like now?

"A stud muffin."

The Negotiator and The Attack of The Tomato

A Weekend in WizaWorld

Audrey and Kaden were looking out a window at a couple of guys parked across the street from my house. "That's Tommy," Audrey told Kaden.

"Who's Tommy?" Kaden asked.

"Tommy is my daddy's boyfriend."

Audrey and Kaden are both 4 years old and while their vocabulary is quite extensive, they still mispronounce words sometimes. Here's an example:

Audrey wanted to know if Kaden knew that tomatoes ruined houses. "You mean the big ones?" Kaden asked.

And Audrey responded, "Sometimes they call them twisters."

After this conversation I decided that Kaden should put on his clothes. His three cousins (some of my other grandchildren) were already dressed. Kaden wanted to stay in his pajamas.

"You can't go outside with your pajamas on," I reasoned with him. And he responded, "How do you know? Have you ever tried it?"

As the morning progressed I found it more and more difficult to restrain myself from laughing and told him that he had to put his pajamas on if he wanted to eat breakfast, to which he responded, "No I don't. I can eat breakfast with my pajamas on."

Two hours later, at snack time, I told Kaden, who was still wearing his pj's, that he HAD to put them on if he wanted a snack. And that's when I noticed Kaden's amazing negotiation skills.

"No, I don't. That's what you said at breakfast, and I still got breakfast."

Hmm.

"Well," I told him, attempting to outsmart the 4-year-old, "now it's snack time and if you want it, you'll have to get dressed."

"You forgot about it the last time," he reminded me.

But I was not to be outdone by my young grandson, so I reminded him that I was the boss in his parents' absence and that I could choose to NOT give him a snack. I saw the wheels spinning in his brain.

"OK," he said, "Here's what we'll do. Whoever says it the fastest wins. So if you say I have to get my clothes on, but I say I get a snack first, I win."

So, of course, I blurted out, "Kaden has to put his clothes on!"

And he said, "It didn't start yet."

Eventually he put on his clothes, but the whole day continued that way, them talking, me laughing, me trying to hide my laughing.

Being a grandparent is so challenging.

She Wanted to Call 911 But She Didn't Know The Number

People keep telling me not to blog about them, but they keep giving me great material, so how can I not? Well, here I go again, disguising somebody else (or is it the same somebody – you'll never know).

Beebeeshababa was alone in her apartment when she heard a noise outside. When she ran to the window, she saw a couple of strange men trying to break into her SUV. She panicked. She had already had her CD player stolen and she wasn't about to lose something else.

So Beebeeshababa grabbed her phone to call the police. Again and again, she tried and she tried to call the police. Again and again she failed and she failed to reach them.

In desperation she called her best friend Shalalala and cried, "I keep calling 911 but it doesn't work for me. Can you call it?"

Shalalala was mystified. "How could it not work for you?"

And Beebeeshababa, who couldn't believe her best friend was wasting precious time, while her SUV was getting ransacked, cried some more, "I don't know, but it doesn't? Can you do it for me, please?"

But Shalalala wouldn't let it go. "It's impossible for 911 not to work, Beebeeshababa. What exactly are you dialing?"

"1-815-911."

How Sushi Became an iPhone

Every year as a combination birthday/Christmas present, my son and his family fly me out to visit them in Oceanside, California. Usually, because my daycare job doesn't allow me to stay longer than a weekend, I am there for only 3 days at the most. This year, however, I was lucky enough to spend 5 days with them!

I've missed a lot of my son's life over the years. As a U.S. Marine who was born in Illinois (where I live) and who is now living in California, Greg was stationed in North Carolina and has been to Japan (for a year), to Thailand (for several months), to Iraq (four times), and to Kuwait (twice) – so whenever I am given the opportunity to spend time with him and his family, it never matters what we do, where we go, what we eat – what matters is that I am spending time with him and with them.

One night we were discussing what to eat for dinner and everybody (I thought) decided on Chinese. Fine by me. As I said, it doesn't matter to me where we eat or what we eat.

So when we pulled in front of a sushi restaurant, I thought, hmm, well, I must have missed this part of the conversation. I've never had sushi, but if this is what the family has decided, I'll try it. Greg was the only one to get out of the car, so I assumed we were picking up the sushi (and not the Chinese) and taking it home.

Then Greg asked me if I wanted to go with him. Well, yeah – anything to spend time together, even if it's just picking up sushi from the local sushi stop. But as I was getting out of the car Michelle warned, "You'd better bring your purse. You'll need your ID."

Oh, OK. They NEVER ask me to pay for anything and, as a matter of fact, REFUSE to allow me to pay for anything, so I was more than willing to foot the bill for dinner. But why would I need an ID to purchase it?

Well, come to think of it, this IS California, and I've heard that sometimes people die from eating sushi, so maybe the state of California is keeping track of who is eating it.

Yes, I really do think that way.

But we walked past the sushi restaurant and into a store that sells iPhones. What? We're not eating sushi?

No, we're getting you an iPhone. Their reason for giving me an extra present was that they were "paying me" to watch the kids. I don't think I'm senile (though I'm sure somebody in my family would argue with me about that). I honestly don't remember ever doing anything that would require them to pay me for doing it.

So this is my reasoning: I take the kids to the park and I get an iPhone. What would they give me if I took the kids to the zoo? A laptop? Or how about a trip to Disneyland? My own plane?

Still this is the greatest toy ever (besides my computer)! And I am so grateful to them for receiving it.

So – Greg, Michelle, Taylor, Kaden, and Zac, thank you thank you thank you – for the trip, for always making me feel welcome, and for giving me another way to keep in touch with you.

Photo of sushi is from Wikimedia Commons. Photo of iPhone is from Apple.

Sarah, This Blog's For You

Every time something happens to a family member or friend that could be construed as being even a tiny bit embarrassing, looks dart in my direction and voices command me, "DO NOT blog about this."

So you don't know even a tenth of the stuff I COULD be writing, although I do manage to write about some of my friends and family anyway by disguising the person enough so that anybody outside the family won't know anything, which makes blogging completely pointless. (You can read more about that HERE.)

But I ramble.

So imagine my surprise when one of my granddaughters, Sarah, said, "Grandma, how come you blog about so and so and so and so, but you never blog about me or my brothers?" I don't remember blogging about her sister, either, but the fact that she left her sister out means I must have, but I have forgotten. I'll have to look at all my blogs to find her.

In my defense, I'm hardly ever with her brothers and sister or her and her family, so it's hard to write about something WHEN NOBODY TELLS ME WHAT'S HAPPENING! Also, EVERYBODY LIVES TOO FAR AWAY!

And yet – I do remember blogging about one of her brothers HERE – it was my first (and only – so far) video blog. Maybe Sarah missed that one.

(Use Ellen's voice here) anyway, I decided to blog about Sarah. You see her above with her husband and daughter. Sarah looks like her mommy (my oldest baby – who just celebrated her 40th birthday – I wrote about her HERE), and Ayla, Sarah's daughter, looks just like her mommy. All three of them are so much alike in so many ways, in fact, that I call them the Clone Heads.

OK, I really don't call them the Clone Heads.

And now to relate a Sarah story to you: Once upon a time in a tiny village waaaay south of Chicago, Sarah's grandma bought a trailer in June the year Sarah was born. Sarah, who was born that following December, and her mommy and daddy (before her three brothers were born), lived in an apartment in Chicago.

When Sarah, who always saw everything as food, was finally able to articulate her thoughts, she looked intently as we drove down the street and asked, "Why do we live in a cracker house and you live in a hot dog house?"

And I wanted to say, "How come you see everything as food? Do your parents never feed you?"

But I didn't. So we went to my house where I fed her crackers and hot dogs.

The truth is I wish blogging had been around when they were little, because now, when I remember things that happened, I don't remember who they happened TO. For instance, was it Sarah in this scenario:

I always tickled (still do) my grandchildren and said things like, "You silly little goof ball." And then one of them – was it Sarah? – said to me once, "You silly little football."

Now that I think about it, it couldn't have been Sarah, because a football isn't a food item.