1. My Mother-In-Law: I have several stories about her, concerning bears, eggs, sausage, and cockroaches in RV's. In years past I did a Christmas letter that was actually a lot like this blog, and retold several of the stories. Then my MIL visited and asked me not to repeat the stories anymore, to which I agreed. (Tear filled eyes were involved and not from me, so of course I agreed.) Now I'm regretting this agreement, which was Pre-blog. I mean, this particular material is like gold. When referring to real life events, some of my writer buddies have often said with me, "You can't make this shit up." And you can't. Well, I can, but I didn't have to make it up. One day I'll either break and tell it anyway or something else will happen. But I don't think my MIL is reading my blog. (Her loss.)
2. HIM's job: This also kills me. HIM, the one to whom I am married, comes home and tells me things that have happened to HIM at work. And here comes that principle again. You can't make this shit up. I grit my teeth, jot a few notes down in my ideas folder for future reference, and the time HIM is retired or HIM moves to a new job, just so I can tell some of these stories. For example, I have personal nicknames for all of HIM's coworkers and some of them will even make Lurch giggle. Damn, they're good, and I can't tell the world about it. (While HIM was in the Army, there was a cute blond lieutenant. She was as dumb as a bag of door knobs and had gotten her degree in underwater basket weaving in some state where the size of her boobs was substituted for her ACT scores. I'm not sure how she passed some of the tests. Well, I spoke to her for about a minute at some officer function or other and later told HIM that they should call her Lieutenant Cupcake, for obvious reasons. Okay, I'll say it. She was pretty on the outside and all fluff on the inside. (I used that in a book, too.) I don't know how she got her silver bar. They must have thrown it at her and prayed she would get married and leave the military. Anyway HIM thought that was so funny that HIM repeated it to a warrant officer HIM knew. Then two weeks later everyone in the battalion was calling her Lieutenant Cupcake. I was actually appalled. Her own boyfriend, the battalion executive officer, was calling her Lieutenant Cupcake. And I'm pretty sure that twenty-odd years later, someone still thinks of her that way and she probably has to snarl something at them, "That's not my fucking name!" The poor woman would probably like to hire a hit man to get the person who was responsible. And it was all my fault. No, it was HIM's fault for repeating it to the warrant officer buddy. I'll just shift the blame.)
3. The Girl Scouts. My daughter is a Daisy. She goes every two weeks to a Daisy troop at her school AND I really, really, really want to jot all my snarky comments down for posterity. I really, really, really do. There's some issues about the other girls, some of whom would drive Mother Theresa bonkers. There's some issues about what we do, because obviously I'm missing the point. There's some issues about cookie sales. And really cubed issues, too. But since I'm the Assistant Troop Leader, I can't say anything. Dammit. (Incidentally, HIM went to a Daisy/Brownie meeting last night and he sez that the school is haunted because HIM sees something moving out of the corner of his eye and when HIM looks there's nothing there. Cue scary music here. What does this have to do with what I'm not permitted to blog about? Nothing, but I'm writing the blog, so I get to include it.)
4. Customer Service. Customer service is my particular peccadillo. Most of the time wherever I go there's basic service. Some places are good. Occasionally it's bad. Then there's really, horribly, wretchedly bad, which is the one that really winds my clock up. It's so bad, vultures circle the place with napkins tied around their necks, holding a fork in their little birdy claws. This is the one area in my life where I equal HIM in OCD tendencies. I have actually had a list of places I will NEVER do business with again. Most of these are in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. One is in the El Paso area. We lived in Texas for years and years and so I managed to find companies and contractors to alienate me. As I now live in Virginia, the list for this area is limited to only a few thus far. (I'll give an example of one I can talk about since I'm probably not visiting that one ever again. There's a Walmart in El Paso at which I am no longer permitted to shop. We bought a TV early one Sunday morning and paid for it in the electronics section in the back. When we got to the front, there was no one at the door waiting to check our receipt. The elderly man whom they'd hired to do this job was chatting up the girls all the way on the opposite side of the store. We stood there for about a minute while he looked down their much younger and perkier cleavages, and we basically said WTH? and went out with our purchase. After all, we had paid for it. Anyway, the elderly man chased us out to our car, going at a snail's pace because he couldn't walk very fast, i.e., he strolled after us, but he was yelling all the way. There wasn't anything elderly about his voice. "You know you're supposed to wait for me!" "They told you that when you bought your TV!" "I don't know why I have to chase you out here!" He was totally pissed off that we didn't wait eternally for him at the door while he had his nose stuck in a boob crack. I was so incensed over his rude chiding that I went back inside and asked to speak to the manager. And I waited for the manager for twenty minutes before HIM determined that my blood pressure was about to pop my arterial ventricles. I must have written twenty letters about that incident to Walmart, the BBB, and everyone else I could think of writing to. Never did get an apology from Walmart, either. And my personal message to that particular Walmart is that they can kiss my big, fat, pink butt, both cheeks.) Anyway, there's a McDonald's in town that I got banned from because some dumb twat wasn't controlling her son in the play area. So the kid was yelling at Cressy. Therefore I yelled at the kid. For some reason the kid decided that Cressy was his new best friend and asked if he could come home with us. I told him he needed to go talk to his mom. His mom thought I was asking the kid to come home with us. So I corrected her. Consequently, the mom yelled at me. My friend who was there with her niece also yelled at the woman. The mom felt obliged to yell at my friend. Cressy and my friend's niece were standing there dumbfounded. There was a comment about how older women shouldn't have kids. (The Mom of the brat was speaking about me.) Then I pretty much blew a fuse and made a comment that it was better than getting knocked up at sixteen because someone is such a roundheels ho. And the other woman pretty much blew her fuse. Fortunately my tirade was purely verbal and then McDonald's management was called into play. And I didn't even get to ride in the back of the police car. Oh, well. It's great fodder for my mill.
5. My sister. This one is more of a judgment call. I will say that when I told my sister that I had been banned from this particular McDonalds, she laughed so hard peas could have shot out of her nose. But other than mentioning that, I'm thinking I'll get pounded into mincemeat if I go into one of the more funnier stories.
6. My daughter. Only certain parts. It's okay if I repeat her stories. (Return of Alligator Girl and Attack of Alligator Girl and the Zombie Kids.) That's because since I illustrated it, it's cool. She likes that. She doesn't read in between the lines and understand the sarcasm I use while I'm writing it. Hopefully she'll understand I'm laughing with her, not at her. I'm only laughing at HIM because HIM does some truly funny shit.
 |
| "Are you Talking about me, Ma? I don't think so." |
No comments:
Post a Comment