Duck It All!



I like that photo. I took that the other day; it just struck me odd to see the duck balancing on the stick like that.

Luckily sometime over night the demonic presence that had inhabited Super Girl decided to give it up and leave. It’s a good thing; my patience for that whining shit is very short.

Super Girl got her report card today; we met with the teacher for a conference (that’s how you get the first report card at her school). She’s doing fine, needs some work on her conduct (as usual for my hardheaded talkative child)

Anyway… I think I’m boring the shit out of you aren’t I? Sorry, not much going on really, except for me being TIRED all the damn time. It’s insane. I can’t figure out why I’m so tired. Eh, whatever, I’ll get over it.

Since I have nothing new to write, I’ll tell about an incident back from when I was about 7 or 8 years old. Someone made me think of this today and it had me laughing so hard.

For a couple of years while growing up my sister and I would be sentenced to spend summers in Northern Louisiana with our great grandmother. It wasn’t all bad really, just MOSTLY SUCKED. See, our great grandmother lived in Columbia Louisiana a little town. It wasn’t being out in ‘the sticks’ but it was probably the last town before you got to ‘the sticks’ and for two little girls who lived in New Orleans, it was absolutely and positively the most rustic, rural and backwards place to have to endure a summer. Now don’t get me wrong, we LOVED our great grandmother to death. Mamaw was great and she was always so happy to see us. Anytime we arrived, day or night, the table would be set for a feast and just sagging from the sheer weight of the masses of fabulous food she had waiting for us. Most every morning we woke to the smell of hot biscuits fresh from the oven and the table was always set with more jars of jams and preserves that I could count (I was pretty bad at math so don’t be too impressed). But it still remained that she was an old lady and we were two little kids. After the newness of having us around 24/7 wore off (like the next day), D and I would spend most of the day outside playing in the yard. I know that sounds just fabulous and it might have been, except that there were NO other kids around to play with. Not in the houses directly around Mamaw and we were not allowed to roam, so it was just us. Again, not so bad, but for some jacked up reason we never had toys with us. I never remember us having more than one doll each and maybe 5 comic books. And that was all we had for the whole freaking summer. *sigh* It was dead boring, we couldn’t look for other kids, we couldn’t go in the shed (snakes), we couldn’t mess around the rose bushes or fig tree and she didn’t have any pets to play with and we could NOT come back in the house unless it was to go potty or if it was time to eat (seriously). Just the two of us. Oh yeah and mamaw didn’t let us watch television, she only watched on occasion, like the news or He Haw. It was almost a joy to have to go to bed as early as Mamaw would put us to bed (as soon as it started getting dark). As boring as it was, D and I had some of the most memorable times, usually when we were sneaking around and/or breaking the rules.

So here we were in Columbia, day in and day out it was the same damn thing (unless it rained, then we were stuck in the house with the same 5 comic books that we had read on the drive from NO to Columbia and our two dolls and told to BE QUIET as we played under the piano), except on Sundays. Mamaw was a devout Pentacostal woman and we got up at the crack of freaking dawn to get dressed in freshly ironed matching dresses and shiny shoes and drive two hours to her church. Church was boring, boring, boring and painfully so (the pews were so damn hard!). Sleeping was OUT of the question as Mamaw was quick to pinch an arm to wake a slumbering child, and be damned if we had yelled out right there in church, Mamaw herself probably would have personally willed the earth to open up and swallow us rather than be embarrassed by our misbehavior in church. Most mornings on the drive to Church, Mamaw would give us a stern lecture about how we were to sit in the pew quietly during service and we were to behave EVEN when she got up to play the piano. We knew better than to act up, Mamaw swung a mean switch.

The first time we were in church we noticed something odd happen. During a certain part of the sermon people would start waving their hands around in the air and start babbling. Sometimes people would fall over or stuff like that and the preacher would go over and touch them. When we got home after church that first time, D and I could not get changed and out into the yard fast enough. We conferred over this subject for quite a while trying to figure out exactly what was going on and decide that we would wait until next week to see if it happened again. Sure enough it happened again. We conferred again and still didn’t have a good explanation. Another Sunday and it happens again, this week D asks Mamaw what all that babbling and hand waving was about and Mamaw said something about those people being ‘touched by the spirit’. Touched by the spirit, eh? We had no freaking clue what she was talking about but it did look funny. After several meetings on the subject that week, it was decided that one or both of us would be ‘touched’ that coming Sunday during service. Luck was on our side on the Sunday as Mamaw had to play the piano during the whacky phase of church and we were alone in the pew. A front pew. After 5 or 6 people had already started the babbling and hand waving, D smirked at me then closed her eyes raised her hands and started babbling. I had to turn away while she did that, I was far to amused (we had practiced this ‘touched’ babbling in the week leading up to this, and it always made me laugh). As I turned away I was now facing our Mamaw and let me tell you if looks could kill we would have been dead right then. She never missed a note on what she was playing but I had the distinct feeling that we were done for. Knowing that, I threw caution to the wind and mimicked my sister and her babbling. About this time the pastor came over and touched us each on the head, seems he was so impressed that we were so moved by the spirit, then Mamaw joined us in the pew as her song was done and play time was over. Though she smiled sweetly to the Pastor, she shot us the dirtiest “Shut the hell up if you know what’s good for you” looks. And we shut the hell up and sat down. That service was probably one of the SHORTEST one’s ever, and I’m sure we felt that only because we were really really hoping it would last long enough for Mamaw to stop making that really angry looking grimace at us and maybe she would FORGET all this and we wouldn’t be in trouble. Not so. We knew we were done for as we walked to the church door to leave. Mamaw didn’t say a fucking word to us. The silence was scary. D had another bright idea on how to stall, once we made it up to the Pastor to shake hands and thank him for his sermon, D took his hand and shook it vigorously and started talking to him. It was comical. Mamaw didn’t see it as that, she knew what it was and told her we had to move along, it was lunch time after all. In a super bold move, D invited the Pastor to lunch with us! Before Mamaw could thunk her in the back of the head with her song book, the Pastor declined and promised it would happen some other time. Damn.. the stall didn’t work. We walked on to the car. Two criminals headed for death row. Mamaw was silent again as she opened the car door and slid behind the wheel. I slid in to ride bitch and D had the window seat. Now here’s where another really bad thing comes to light about Columbia LA, it’s nowhere, I mean NO-WHERE. So all the roads are like driving out in the boonies, not real populated. When Mamaw was about half way home and we were half way certain we would escape this incident with nary a reprimand the car pulled off the road and came to a stop. Our sweet little great grandmother pulled us both out of the car and beat the daylights out of both of us at the same time, then put us back in the car, warned us not to make a peep the rest of the way home and drove on without even a hair out of place or her nice Sunday dress being wrinkled. That day I may not have felt the spirit move me, but I sure as hell felt her hand against my ass and believe me THAT moved me!

To this day D and I still laugh about that day, we might not have been able to sit straight for the next week, but it sure was funny!