Leg-oooooooo Noooooo!

By Jody Worsham

All rights reserved for First Aid

I am what you call a Wal-Mart frequent shopper/walker.  My face appears on their security tape entering and leaving their store more often than anyone in town.  It is not that I am an avid shopper; it’s just that I find myself with many separate hours to kill while I wait for ballet lessons, violin lessons, Boy Scouts, basketball or whatever to be over.   Because of this, I am acutely aware of their clearance aisles and their ever changing rotation and migration of merchandise and have a closet similar to a Wal-Mart warehouse.

At Christmas, not trusting anyone over four feet five inches, the eight-year-old had me put his many Wal-Mart gift cards in the safe.  This served a dual purpose. It prevented impulse buying on his part, and I could see which defective toys made it back to the return counter at Wal-Mart after Christmas.  On one of my recent walking tours, I noticed all the Christmas junk toys were gone, and the good stuff like Legos, were now being marked down.  Time to retrieve the boy and the gift cards.

As the Wal-Mart greeter called me by name, we headed for the toy aisle.   As usual, the clearance Legos were Legos no one wanted.  The eight-year-old headed straight for the good stuff.  When he showed me the box, three things immediately jumped out at me, first the price.  When did a toy cost as much a mid-size compact?  Second, how can 512 Legos fit into such a small package?  And third, why was a grenade wired to the box? 

I had promised myself that I would bite my tongue before I said anything negative about his selection.  It was his money, his choice, his Lego.  With my teeth clamped tightly on my tongue, he put his selection in the shopping cart. Why is it that every Wal-Mart has at least one cart with a wheel that is locked, lopsided, or lists to the left and I always end up with that one? We lurched toward the checkout stand with the loaded Legos.

 
As the cashier scanned and removed the detonating device from the Lego box, the eight-year-old pulled out his gift cards.  Card number one had either been next to my cell phone or had been used and forgotten because it was blank.  I bite my tongue.  Card number two was ok as was card three and four and my tongue began to swell. Card number five was for McDonald’s and so could not be used to purchase Legos, and card number six completed the purchase with $5.22 to spare.

 
“What’s the matter Mom? Are you crying?” 

“No, just bit my tongue.”

Next week, The Lego Wars

 

Concerto for Can and Shoe Box

By Jody Worsham

All rights reserved for ear plugs

My husband was soon to celebrate his 72^nd  birthday.  The children were huddled up assembling the carrot birthday cake they had decided to make for his birthday. The topic then turned to birthday presents.  The seven-year-old declared presents weren’t necessary, “Because love is the best present… and that doesn’t cost anything.”  If he had just left off that last part, I could have basked in the glow of superb parenting.  The tween-ager, thinking more of her upcoming birthday I’m sure, declared presents were an absolute must, but since  I’m sure she was also thinking of her limited cash flow from the Trump Chicken Condo business venture, she was thinking I would have to provide the money for any gifts.  From the office where Dr. Hubby was wading through pages of credit card charges, I could hear rumblings and then very clearly   “No presents.  I can’t afford presents.”

“Well, you can’t have a birthday party without some kind of present,” declared the Tween-ager.  I have always been a proponent of giving something of yourself, something that cannot be bought or given by anyone else.  With this in mind, the seven-year-old declared, “We will give him a concert.”  Some of you may recall from past blogs the Summer Concert for Plastic Barrel and Galvanized Pipe that lasted three hours and caused dogs to howl and hearing aids to squeal.  Since this did not require the Tween-ager to delve into her egg money, she agreed.  “A concert is the perfect gift.”

Immediately they abandoned the carrot cake, leaving me to finish up.  Since I had been paying for violin lessons for three years and started the seven-year-old on guitar lessons this summer, I foolishly assumed the concert would involve, you know, actual musical instruments….and maybe a recognizable song or two.  Ha!

 “Where is an empty shoe box?”

“I can’t find the rubber bands.”

“I need two pencils that have not been sharpened.”

“Are you going to use these empty cans for anything?

“What are you guys up to? “

“Recycling! Who needs real drums when you have cans?”

“Multi-tasking.  I’m checking out the science project on sound and vibrations while making a shoe-box guitar.”

“We need coke bottles filled with different levels of water.  Not chemical bottles because you are going to have to blow on them.”

While I watched the cake and washed out coke bottles, rubber bands were stretched over the shoe box and various sized cans became the Tween-ager’s version of steel drums.  Soon the “rehearsals” began.  The seven-year-old strummed his “guitar”, the Tween-ager kept the tin can beat going, and I blew till I was light headed.

A few deafening minutes later, Dr. Hubby slipped me the credit card.

Happy Birthday, Honey!  Hope you like your presents.

Spit Rods

By Jody Worsham, Oct 2010

All rights reserved for membership in the NSA (National Spit-wadders of America)

In an effort to infuse our raised-on-the-farm heritage into my five-year-old and to insure that this historical school boy past time continues, I decided to teach him the manly art of spit wad shooting.

Now, as a teacher, I stand totally against spit wadding. If you have ever had to scrap spit wads off a black board aka chalk board, aka green board now known as a "white" board, you know that only Cheerios soaked in milk and sugar is harder to scrap off. Cheerios in milk and sugar is the forerunner of super glue. Still the boy needed to learn. Spit wads aren't the problem; it's the people who spit them and there is a time and place for everything, even spit wadding.

The time and place appeared simultaneously as we were waiting in the car for his sister's violin lesson to finish. We had made our prerequisite stop at McDonald's so we were equipped with the needed supplies: straws, napkins, and a very moist mouth. To keep him entertained, ok and me, we first had target shooting. We blew the paper coverings off the straws. The contest was based on distance, velocity, and aerodynamics. I won.

Having retrieved the straw jackets, we progressed to spit wadding. I showed him first how to tear off a bit of the paper straw jacket and chew it into a nice soggy wad. Now judging from his t-ball days (a few months ago) I knew he was directionally-challenged. To protect his fragile ego and bolster his self-esteem, I went for the ancient African Pigmy Blow-gun Technique. We retrieved our straws, tore off a piece from the paper straw jacket, placed the straw in our mouth and positioned the wad correctly, and let loose with a heavily saliva loaded wad. Bull's eye! He hit the windshield dead solid in the center. He was ecstatic! His Dad would be so proud. I beamed. Once a teacher, always a teacher I

Nothing breeds success like success. He continued tearing, salivating, wadding and blowing with ever increasing accuracy. When his sister reached the car, he demonstrated his new found skill by hitting her right between the eyes with a good wet one which immediately started WWIII.

After negotiating a peace treaty and reiterating the appropriate time and place, we headed for home. There were still mumblings coming from the rear seat. The nine-year-old had long ago mastered the womanly art of spit wad dueling. I think she was just waiting for a worthy opponent and one had been found.

Two minutes out and at the first mile marker, the peace treaty was broken and WWIV began in full force. It was only seconds before all napkins and sacks were decimated and the two children looked like they had some new kind of chicken pox. I pulled over with hazard lights flashing. "No more spit wads. The war is over and I am the victor!" I screamed. "Who's Victor?" whispered the five-year-old to his sister.

We drove on in silence past the three mile marker when suddenly "ping". Loose gravel? Ping! A petrified mosquito? Ping…ping..ping! A glance in the rear view mirror revealed straws to their mouths but no evidence of white wads anywhere. As I turned into our drive-way and parked, the children bounded out of the car, each with a straw and a cup of ice. Ping! Ping! Ping ping ping!! Mouth Gatling guns spitting out ice wads.

"Hey Daddy", yelled the five-year-old, " Guess what! Mama showed me how to make Spit Rods." The ice pelting continued as both children headed for cover behind the frog condos in the sand pile.

"Spit rods?" quizzed my husband.

"So he didn't get the name right, but check out his accuracy. He's headed for the pros."

"If he doesn't head for the principal's office first."

Ping!