Kim's Thoughts

Just some random memories that have popped into my head recently.  Over the past couple of weeks, various things have triggered memories that brought a smile to my face or made me laugh out loud for what appears to be no reason to those who observed it.  I thought I might share them…..

• Pet Related:
  • When we first brought Puddles home, she was not house trained.  It seemed like whenever I took her outside to do her duty, she would just stand there looking at me like she had no idea what in the world to do and then she’d come in and do it on the floor!  I noticed, though, that if she got active out there and ran around a little, it would “get things moving”, so to speak, and she would do everything that needed to be done!  SO — I turned it into a game and whenever I took her out, I would run and dance around the yard with her singing a few specially selected songs to set the mood for her:  BTO’s “Taking Care of Business” (no lyrics changes needed), Eddie Murphy’s “Party All The Time” (changed lyrics to “My baby wants to POTTY all the time…”), and Leslie Gore’s “It’s My Party” (changed lyrics to “It’s my potty and I’ll pee-pee if I want to, poo-poo if I want to…”).  At the time, we owned a big brick house on the last block of N. Steele Street and the neighbors or people driving by must have thought I was nuts!
  • I had a toy apricot poodle, Buffy, when I first started dating my future husband.  When Buffy passed away from cancer, I was devastated.  My then-boyfriend decided to surprise me with a gift – an adorable little beagle puppy we named Easy.  Poor Easy jumped off the porch one day and broke his hind leg!  His cast was bigger than he was, but he hobbled around on that thing and made us laugh for weeks!  The problem was, Easy was growing, so we had to take him in for a new cast 2-3 times before the leg healed!
  • When Easy got older and we moved to Sanford, he was a good hunter and stubborn as all get out!  We lived in town on Steele Street, at the time, and he would take off after a scent and we wouldn’t see him for hours or days.  So, we got one of those electronic invisible fences.  The first couple of times he tried to leave the property, he would get zapped and come back to the house.  We were so pleased that he learned so fast and that it looked like it was going to work…….but not for long!  It didn’t take him long at all to figure out that the zap only lasted a few seconds and it really wasn’t that bad!  If he was determined to leave, it was worth the pain — he would get a few feet from where the signal would get him and just stand there thinking, then he would take off like a shot, yelp and yell as he went through the signal area and keep right on going!  Then, he would do the same when he returned — you could just see his thought process as he prepared himself for the jolt and bam, he was gone!
• Mom, My Brother, and Me
  • One evening, my brother, Mom, and I were eating at the kitchen bar and joking around and acting silly.  My brother decided to be smart and act like he was going to hit the bottom of the ketchup bottle to pretend to make it spray out at our Mom.  To all of our surprise, the cap must not have been on tight cause as soon as he hit the bottom of the bottle, the cap went flying and ketchup gushed out of the bottle all over Mom and the bar!!!  (OMG – I just set off a laughing jag just writing about this one!!!)
  • My brother used to love to torment me, but I was determined to not be his victim!  One afternoon, I was sitting in the living room watching a movie and eating a plate of spaghetti.  He came in and changed the channel on me!  I yelled at him and changed it back, but he just changed it again!  This was before there were remote controls, so it meant getting up and going over to the TV to do all this.  This went on for a while with some pushing and shoving and fighting over what channel it would stay on.  Finally, I had sat back down with my spaghetti and was watching the movie and he came in and changed it AGAIN!  That was the last straw — I took that plate of spaghetti and threw it at him!  Luckily, he ducked and it didn’t hit him, because I threw it so hard that it shattered against the wall it hit – this plate was made of a thick molded plastic called Melmac, which was guaranteed to be unbreakable!!  If it had hit him, he would have been seriously hurt (even though, at the time, that was the goal).  There was spaghetti all over the wall and floor!  What a mess!
  • Mom (or my brother – don’t remember which, for sure) was taking a large glass jar of Miracle Whip from the fridge to the counter and it slipped out of their hands — the jar hit the floor with such force that the lid flew off and Miracle Whip exploded up out of the jar all the way up to the ceiling and everything in between!  Another hysterical mess!
  • When my brother and I were little, my Mom worked multiple jobs.  One particular morning, we were playing in the living room, which was right outside her bedroom, trying to be quiet because she had worked a full shift and then tended bar until the wee hours of the morning, so she was pretty exhausted.  We heard her say something, but didn’t make it out, so we went to her door and asked her what she said.  She repeated it, but it was obvious that she was talking in her sleep.  We giggled and laughed about it.  The words she said were “Don’t drink it, eat your Christmas tree!”  The funny thing was, we were playing with a shot glass set that was an opened gift under the Christmas tree and eating Christmas cookies shaped like Christmas trees!  We have never let her live that down and it never fails to bring uproarious laughter to all of us when anyone just randomly says “Don’t drink it, eat your Christmas tree!”
  • Mom, my brother, and I were driving down the street one day and my brother was telling Mom about some kid who gave him the finger at school.  He wanted to be sure she knew what he meant, so he reached up from the back seat and put his hand in front of her face while she was driving with his middle finger sticking up!  Mom pushed it away and lectured him about how people driving by would think he was doing that to her and that he shouldn’t be distracting her like that when she’s driving.  My brother and I got a chuckle out of it — Mom didn’t share our humor!  But it is still funny thinking about it — especially when I saw some kid waving his hands in front of his mother’s face from the back seat when she was driving behind me on Horner Blvd the other day!
• Other family:
  • My son, Robby, was such a cutie when he was little!  We went shopping one day and spent $100 on a bunch of miscellaneous stuff — well, he thought that was so cool – he told everyone that would listen that we spend “a whole $100 in just one day!!!”  Another time, we were out shopping and he wanted some toy – I told him I didn’t have the money for it, so he couldn’t get it.  He pouted and said, “well, why don’t you just write a check?”  He didn’t accept the explanation that you must have money in the account before you can write a check!
  • My nephew, Bryan, was 3 years-old when I got married.  My brother, his wife, and Bryan all came up to the wedding from SC.  Bryan was so cute in his best little outfit!  As I walked down the aisle with my Poppie, Bryan yelled out “Hey, there’s Aunt Kim.”  I waved at him as I walked by.  But, that wasn’t enough for him.  He kept calling out to me – “Aunt Kim, hey, Aunt Kim….” – until his Dad took him outside to quiet him down.  What my brother didn’t think about was that we were in a historical old church that didn’t have air conditioning, so we had the windows all open.  I snickered as we all listened to my brother and Bryan having a “come to Jesus” session right outside one of the open windows!  This story is one of my favorite and most endearing memories of my wedding and I enjoy telling Bryan – who just had a baby boy of his own in January – all about it!!!
• I used to ride mini-bikes, dirt bikes, and eventually, motorcycles.  I took a few spills and had a few incidents on them doing stupid things…….
  • Once, I was riding a mini-bike at a Family Picnic where my Mom (and later I) worked.  The throttle stuck on full speed and I couldn’t get it to slow down or stop!  Luckily, I was good at riding them in fields and rough ground – I was able to jump and avoid an accident on several ditches while I tried to get it to ease off the throttle — until one ditch that I misjudged and came down nose first into it and went head over tea kettle hanging on all the way!  I only know the details from what I was told from witnesses cause I had no memory of it happening – I remembered getting on the bike and then being walked to the car to leave and asking what happened! 
  • Another time, I was showing off with a new motorcycle in my back yard.  The grass was wet and I started to slide into the pool – instead of just easing off and riding it out to avoid running into the pool, I chose to clamp down on the hand breaks – the bike stopped abruptly, but I didn’t – I flew over the handle bars onto the grass in front of the bike – just barely missing slamming into the side of the pool!  
  • I was taking a friend’s low rider out for a spin – it was low slung, so I didn’t have any trouble putting both feet flat on the ground, but it was a very heavy bike — I was stopped at a light and shifted on the seat just a little to get comfortable and the bike started to lean over – my foot wasn’t square on the ground cause I was shifting my weight, so I couldn’t stabilize the bike and it started to go down – it was too heavy for me to recover – I was able to lay it down gently and not cause any damage to the bike, but had to get two guys in the car behind me to help me pick it back up and did a wicked job of twisting my ankle and knee — and ate a good dose of humiliation over it! 
  • I took my own motorcycle out for a ride and a couple miles or so from the house, it stalled out.  I thought it was out of gas, but checked and the tank was full.  I checked a few other things and everything seemed fine, but it wouldn’t start back up.  So, I pushed it all the way back home.  When I got there, my Poppie checked it out to see what was wrong with it and discovered that I had the gas valve on “reserve”, so once the small amount in the reserve tank was gone, it quit!  If I had just turned it “on”, I would have been fine and wouldn’t have needed the major workout I got pushing a dead bike all that way!
  • But, the best memories of my motorcycles was driving home on warm summer nights after working second shift – flying down Ridge Road after midnight with little or no traffic – sailing along, weaving in and out of the broken center line of the road or leaning back with my arms up over my head seeing how long it took for the forks to veer off one way or the other……absolute freedom!!!!

Enough memory lane for one night…….