So I keep starting to write down things for different episodes but never get much further than the first couple of paragraphs. It is all stuff that strikes me as great “let’s laugh at ourselves and learn something” material but I can’t seem to fill a whole page with it and still keep it interesting.
At first I thought I would just scrap it all but it was good stuff … Stuff like I went to the dentist the other day and they crammed 18 cups of green playdough into my mouth and then tried to start a conversation with me (didn’t their mothers ever teach them not to talk with their mouths full? Or what about not eating playdough?!? For people who supposedly went to college for 6 years and got a medical degree they don’t seem to have mastered the basics that the rest of us picked up in preschool.)
There was also the phone call I got from a friend who was standing, buck naked, in the middle of her kitchen trying to cook for a fast approaching family event but couldn’t because her baby was having a hunger meltdown. She was naked because the meltdown started on her way into the shower (which she never got by the way) and by the time she had gotten the baby calmed enough to feed him she only had a few minutes to cook for the party. I didn’t think that was the right time to remind her of her statement she made before she had the baby, comparing dog ownership to parenthood.
There was also something about having Thanksgiving with my Chilean and Puerto Rican in-laws. It went well and I had fun. My father-in-law said the blessing in Spanish and even though I didn’t know exactly what he said, God did and that’s who he was talking to, so it’s all good. We did have turkey and I made bread and pie but the rest of the food was was a little less traditional than I was used too. We had arroz con pernil y flan… Look it up.
Then of course, there is my husband’s hair cut. I might have been able to fill up a whole page on this topic. He has about 2 weeks of decent looking hair right in between “bad” and “awful”, after which it moves right on to straight-up creepy. He usually cuts his own hair with clippers and leaves barely a stubble field making him look something like Curly from The Three Stooges. After it grows a little, it doesn’t look too bad - but it quickly passes that stage and into what we call, the “Chia-Pat” stage, all poofy on top and everywhere. Then it grows a little more and enters the “Lord of the Rings villain” stage and there it stays until he shaves again, like he is preparing for brain surgery.
There was one time when he got a legit cut from a barber, but unfortunately, he got it done on Christmas day - which means that the only barber shops open were either Jewish or Asian. We knew right off the bat, when he got home, where he had gone. He walked around with a very nice Vietnamese haircut on his Hispanic head until it grew out.
I started a paragraph or so about the day I first found that I fit into mom-jeans and how I had bought them because not only did they fit comfortably, but they looked pretty good too. I didn’t get very far with that one though because it is hard to write on paper that is wet with tears… it was more of a “let’s cry and learn” thing than a “let’s laugh and learn” thing. The only reason I am able to write about it now is because I am convinced that they are making mom-jeans better and more fashionable now…. that and I’m typing on a computer and if I hold my head back far enough the tears can’t ruin the keyboard.
Then inspiration struck when my husband told me I was just like his mother because I wanted the turkey leg.
First of all, fellas, I don’t think you should ever tell your girl that she is like your mom, or any other woman for that matter, unless that woman is someone she truly wants to emulate.
Don’t get me wrong; my mother-in-law and I get along pretty well, but our similarities are minimal and I would rather my husband appreciate me for me own qualities. Besides, the fact that we both want the turkey leg is as far as that similarity goes and it is really a rather superficial one because we want it for very different reasons. She actually likes the leg meat. I like looking like King Henry the 8th.
For the taste and texture value, I would rather eat the breast meat, but sitting there with my elbows on the table and a hunk of roasted meat still on the bone is gloriously dramatic and comical. It is an opportunity that is too much for me to pass up.
My mother-in-law is not this way. She can be dramatic but not in a theatrical sense. She wants the leg because she prefers the dark meat - I don’t know if she actually likes it better but she always eats it - along with the gristle, skin, cartilage, those stringy tendon thingies and, occasionally, the bone. Never throw away anything. That would be wasteful.
I may not be able to fill the book with all this great material but there was at least enough for an episode. Little things like this are a wonderful glimpse of real life. Life is like the blooper reel from a really great movie (all you have to do is watch 10 minutes of AFV to see that). Simply because we are living human beings these things are part of our life and I think it is great! What with everything we deal with, we need it for comic relief. Life provides us with an opportunity to laugh nearly every day and we would be wise to find and enjoy it.
They say laughter is the best medicine so a little levity is just the thing, and what could be more convenient than being the center of the joke?
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