Not Funny, But I Laughed Anyway

Last week, when I went to the transit center to catch a bus to the mall, I saw a man who supposedly was in charge of his small daughter. Daughter looked about two years old, but she might have been younger. She wasn’t that steady on her feet. At first, she careened around, straying away from Dad and getting in the way of people who were rushing to catch other buses.

Our bus wasn’t scheduled to leave for 15 minutes. The bus door was open, and the bus driver was sitting in the driver’s seat, taking a break. Daughter soon discovered the open door.

Dad stood around grinning, presumably with pride, as the toddler awkwardly and repeatedly climbed into the bus, struggled to her feet, turned around, and jumped onto the sidewalk. She thought that was just great. What the bus driver thought is not known. I thought it was an accident waiting to happen.

Later, about halfway through their trip, Dad took an over-the-counter medicine bottle from a tote bag, opened the bottle, and knocked back a pill or two. Then he grabbed Daughter’s sippy cup and washed down the pill(s).

While he was busy doing that, Daughter retrieved the medicine bottle from the tote bag and proceeded to whack Dad in the head. And she wasn’t doing it gently. She hit him five or six times, but he didn’t try to stop her. I so wanted to say, “Well, we know who rules the roost in your house.”

But I didn’t. Instead, I started laughing. And then Dad started laughing while Daughter continued to whack him in the head. About a minute later Daughter stopped hitting Dad and noticed the open window. She drew back her little arm, aimed the bottle at the window, and made an attempt to pitch the bottle into the street.

Dad grabbed the bottle just in time.

My Parents Are to Blame for This

[Note: As short as this post is, I’ve incorporated material from two previously published essays (Tucson Citizen, July 1987; Themestream, January 2001). The revised Themestream essay eventually will be posted in its entirety on another (sorry about that) site. Until then, here is a preview.]

Give me a task, and I’ll do it well, unless, of course, it involves some sort of housework.

And there is a good reason why. As a toddler, I was terrorized by Mom’s vacuum cleaner, a baggy brown behemoth that roared through the house two or three times a week. When Mom wanted to run the vacuum cleaner, she had to conscript a relative to take me somewhere—anywhere.

My parents couldn’t figure out why I was so frightened by the darn thing. Who knows? (I certainly don’t.) Maybe the noise drove me crazy. Then again, one morning the machine came dangerously close to sucking up the cat. Maybe I thought it would get me next.

My histrionics, I mean hysterics, drove Mom and Dad a little crazy. Mom hoped it was just a phase I was going through. Even then, she looked forward to the day when I could start helping out around the house.

That finally happened when I was eight, and it lasted about ten minutes. I was no longer afraid of the vacuum cleaner. However, on my first try, I lost control of the machine, crashed into the china cabinet, demolished two table lamps, and knocked my little brother into a magazine rack.

“For Pete’s sake, Mary Frances,” Dad yelled, “do it yourself before she destroys everything.”

Unfortunately, Dad’s instinct for self-preservation condemned my mother to doing most of her own housework forever.