Not The Mama

Pam: I’m always telling you unflattering stories about my boss Archie so I thought I’d tell you a different kind.

Ann: You mean he did something right?

Pam: Sort of…he was telling me today this past weekend he took on two full days of babysitting for his two grandsons.

Ann: Really? Overnight?

Pam: Yep.

Ann: That’s quite a job! How old are they now?

Pam: I think they’re going into first and third grade. The younger one might just be going into Kindergarten…I’m not sure.

Ann: How’d it go?

Pam: It sounds like it went fine. I guess he does this occasionally when his son and daughter-in-law drive to a nearby city to check on her folks. Saturday night he took them to one of those pizza places that has all the kid’s arcade games.

Ann: I know that would wear ME out and Archie’s got a few years on me. The boys are old enough to tell time. I think I would’ve had to move the clocks and put them to bed early.

Pam: That shouldn’t have been a problem. Archie’s daughter-in-law left strict instructions for a 9:30 bedtime. She tries to keep them on a regular schedule. That’s probably why they’re so well behaved. She really is a good mom.

Ann: So he only had to last until 9:30? I could probably manage that.

Pam: But he went way past it. Being the fun-loving grandpa, they were all up playing until nearly midnight. But Archie says it’s okay because after 9:30 they were all playing in bed.

Ann: Oh no! I don’t think their mom is going to accept the technicality. Did she find out?

Pam: Well at lunch on Sunday, just before their parents came home, Archie told the boys, “Remember, if Mama asks, you guys were in bed by 9:30. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it!”

Ann: Well, I guess that’s a version of the truth. How’d it go over? Did the boys remember what to say?

Pam: The little one remembered too well. When his mother asked what time they got to bed, he said “We were in bed by 9:30. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it!”

Pet Therapy

Ann: I was just watching reruns of “Frasier”. The dad’s dog, Eddie, had a little friend, a pigeon who would come and sit on the balcony. It made me think of you and the menagerie of animals you used to have at your house. Didn’t Kate’s dog, Misfit, have a pet?

Pam: Don’t remind me! Yeah…our dog had a pet. It was actually a compromise. Kate kept insisting Misfit was lonely and needed a ‘wife’. We weren’t about to add another dog to the household so we settled on a guinea pig.

Ann: What was his name again?

Pam: Fred. He was pretty cute and believe it or not, he really did seem to be Misfit’s pet. Imagine a little Chihuahua and a guinea pig that would play together, share their treats with each other, and even sleep together.

Ann: Only at your house!


Pam: It wasn’t always such smooth sailing though. Kate really got her feelings hurt when after Misfit had his pet guinea pig for about six months, Bret called her from the pet food aisle at the grocery store. He was standing in front of all the bags of critter food and called to ask Kate, “What kind of animal is Fred again?”

Ann: He didn’t know what kind of animal the guinea pig was?!

Pam: Yeah. Later he told me that he knew Fred was a furry rodent of some kind but when he got to the store and saw all the pictures on the bags, they all looked like Fred to him. He couldn’t remember if Fred was a guinea pig, a gerbil, a ferret, or what. Kate was pretty upset with her dad and told him, “What if someone had to ask what kind of animal you were? How would that make you feel?”

Ann: It didn’t seem to bother my college boyfriend when I’d ask him that question.

Pam: So what kind of animal was he?

Ann: I think I was dating an octopus.

Pam: At least Bret only had to endure Kate’s hurt feelings. That darn guinea pig almost caused me to lose a huge deal.

Ann: Okay…only you could blame a deal falling through on a guinea pig! I’m ready…let’s have it.


Pam: I was sitting in an important lunch meeting about to convince new clients to sign a huge contract when my cell phone vibrated and I saw it was Kate. She was about thirteen at the time and she knew not to call during the work day unless it was urgent. So I gave my apologies to the businessmen at my table, told them it was urgent, and answered the phone as discretely as I could.

Ann: I hate having to take a call at a time like that…everyone’s focused on you wondering what’s so important that you had to interrupt a meeting with a call. Did you step out?

Pam: I couldn’t. I was ‘trapped’ in the very center of one of those big round booths so I couldn’t step away without making half the table ‘scoot and stand’. I just hoped it would be a quick call and kept my voice down. Or so I thought.

Ann: It’s hard not to hear someone on the phone at the same table.

Pam: Kate sounded upset and she said she was worried about Fred. As I listened to her concerns the men at the table appeared to go on with their own conversations so I focused on Kate and on trying to figure out what the problem was.

Ann: Misfit’s pet guinea pig was sick?


Pam: In a manner of speaking…So I was listening to Kate and I was trying to understand her concerns and reassure her. Unfortunately my question to Kate came right during a lull in the conversation at the lunch table and the businessmen all heard me ask, “So how can you tell your dog’s guinea pig is depressed?” They suddenly all burst into laughter and instantly my credibility dropped through the floor.

Ann: What did you expect? In a single sentence you revealed that your daughter’s pet had a pet and that she believed it was suffering an emotional illness. I’ve known you for nearly twenty years and I’m wondering about you myself now!

Pam: She described the ‘symptoms’ and I told her I was sure that Fred was just fine.

Ann: Not so fast…maybe the fact that Bret didn’t know what kind of animal he was sent Fred into a clinical depression. Perhaps he needs therapy.

Pam: Hey, don’t give Kate any ideas!

A Foolish Mom And Her Money

Ann: My house looks like it’s in a horror movie. There are literally thousands of furry caterpillars covering the entire outside.

Pam: Is that from the webworms we saw a couple weeks ago that were all over that huge tree out front?

Ann: Yeah, it’s pretty creepy. I wish I could at least charge them rent.

Pam: Better yet, gather them up and sell ‘em.

Ann: Who on earth would pay for caterpillars?

Pam: Oh how soon you forget. Remember when Ross was about seven? I made the mistake of agreeing to step into the pet store to look at the puppies. But Ross became fascinated with the anoles.

Ann: What the heck’s an anole?

Pam: That’s a fancy pet store term for a common garden lizard. They seem to think that using an exotic name will convince a gullible, indulgent mother to make the purchase.

Ann: Well, apparently it worked because I remember when you had those particular pets.

Pam: It started out simply enough – a clear plastic cage and two lizards. Then they tried to sell me ceramic sticks for them to crawl on.

Ann: Heck, I had plenty of real ones I’d have sold you.

Pam: I said I had an endless supply of sticks in my yard. Believe it or not, they said outdoor sticks weren’t sterile and the anoles would get sick. Ross looked up at me in a panic.

Ann: What, did Ross think the lizards in the yard were taking high-powered antibiotics? So did you buy the fake sticks?

Pam: No, but I must confess, to ease his mind, we boiled EVERY stick before it went into the cage.

Ann: So how does this help me with my caterpillars?

Pam: I’m getting there. We bought freeze-dried lizard food but the stupid lizards wouldn’t eat it and after a couple of days their little tummies were starting to cave in. So it was back to the pet shop for advice.

They told me the lizards might prefer live food and sold me a margarine tub full of mealworms. I had to keep them in the fridge so they would stay dormant until I put them in the cage. Then they’d warm up, wiggle and draw the lizards’ attention.


Ann: So did that make the lizards fat and happy?

Pam: Only one, the other one must have been a gourmet and mealworms must not have qualified. So it was back to the pet store yet again.

This time, they told me that he probably wanted to ‘hunt’ his own food and they sold me a clear plastic bag with three live crickets.

Ann: Yuck!

Pam: Yeah, it was nasty but it worked. Both lizards loved ‘em. Unfortunately it wasn’t ‘cricket season’ so I couldn’t gather them myself. I had to stop by the pet store every couple of days for fresh crickets. Well, that got old fast, so believe it or not, I bought a second cage to fill with crickets.


Ann: So what’s the life expectancy of a cricket in captivity?

Pam: I assume you mean prior to being put in the lizard cage. That leads to the next absurdity. To keep the crickets alive while they awaited their fate, I had to buy cricket food.

Ann: Let me get this straight, you bought food for the food?

Pam: I told you it was absurd. This is what mothers do.

Ann: You forget, I’m a mom too, and I can honestly say I never had dormant mealworms sleeping in my fridge or bought food to feed the food for our pets.

Pam: Well, I said I’m a gullible, indulgent mother.

Ann: In that case, back to my caterpillars. Have I got a deal for you!

Those Were The Days

Pam: This morning I saw a young mom and her toddler picking out DVD’s to add to their collection. It’s all too easy now. I think it’s kind of sad that kids can see their favorite show anytime they want.

Ann: I don’t know. At times, video tapes were a life saver for me when my kids were little. How do you see it as sad?

Pam: Don’t you remember what a big deal it was when Charlie Brown or The Wizard of Oz was going to be on? It’d be all we talked about at school that day. Then that night we’d take our baths early, get into our jammies, pop some Jiffy Pop, turn down all the lights, and ‘shush’ each other during the opening credits. It was a big deal. Now kids can watch anything they want, any time they want. It’s not special anymore.

Ann: You’re right. There isn’t that shared experience of all the kids watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas at the same time and then talking about it in school the next day. It is sort of sad.

Pam: I remember when I was about three and my brother Jack was five. We were very excited to watch Cinderella on TV. We did all the usual rituals and we felt special because our little sister, Mandy, was only one and a half and was put to bed before it began.

Ann: Oh the privileges of age!


Pam: Hey, this was big stuff. The program started and my brother and I were enthralled when the phone rang and my mom went to answer the only one in the house hanging on the kitchen wall.

Ann: I remember that. Ours was like that too. We had one of those red vinyl bar stool kind of things with the fold out steps just beneath it so us kids could reach it.

Pam: Well, Mandy had just mastered climbing out of her crib and my mom didn’t know that while she was on the phone, our sister had joined Jack and me in front of the TV. Then she started asking us for “wa-wa”.

Ann: She wanted a drink of water?

Pam: Yep. But we were not going to miss one second of Cinderella to get our baby sister a drink. So we kept telling her no. It’s not like now where you can pause it and come back or where you have the entire thing memorized like kids today. This was our one shot to see it and we weren’t going to miss a word.

Ann: Your poor sister.

Pam:Well she got back at us. Since we wouldn’t get her something to drink she went looking for it herself and found a wonderful collection on a mirrored tray on my mother’s dresser. She’d pulled out a lower drawer, stood in it, and drank a whole bottle of perfume!

Ann: Oh my gosh! That’s awful…what happened?

Pam: My mom came back into the living room where we were all sitting on the floor in front of the console TV and she could smell the perfume in the air. So she started to sniff each of us, narrowed it down to Mandy, checked out the bedroom, and figured out what happened.

Ann: How frightening. Did she call an ambulance or poison control or something?

Pam: I don’t think they had poison control back then. I just remember my dad driving really fast, my mother in the front seat holding Mandy wrapped in a blanket, and my brother and me in the back seat balling our eyes out because we were missing Cinderella.

Ann: Was she okay?

Pam: Well, they did whatever they do when a baby drinks perfume and she was fine as far as that was concerned. But she had two older siblings to contend with who were not very happy with her for quite some time.

Manure Happens

Ann: I just hung up with my cousin Cindy. We were reminiscing about when we were kids. I always thought my aunt was the coolest, but the more I hear from Cindy about her mom, the more I wonder if we’re talking about the same woman.

Pam: A kid’s perspective on their parents is always very different than anyone else’s. I keep telling my kids that the permissive and fun-loving man who is their grandfather is NOT the man who raised me.

Ann: Won’t it be fun when we’re permissive and fun-loving?

Pam: Hey, we already are, we’re just wise enough not to let our kids see it.

Ann: Apparently, I got my wisdom from my aunt. Cindy was telling me that she and her brothers and sister used to absolutely hate working in the garden when they were kids. But their mom counted on the vegetables to help feed their large family so they had to pitch in.

Pam: I love gardening but according to my kids, I only grow “useless” flowers.

Ann: So one year my aunt told the kids that the circus was in town. She said if they were good and helped in the garden all week without complaining, she’d take them into town on Saturday to see the clowns and animals.

Pam: Sounds pretty cool to me.

Ann: Just wait….So Cindy and the other kids were very excited and gave her the most enthusiastic help they ever had. They spent the week weeding, hoeing, picking, and watering. Cindy’s brother even suggested they whistle or sing while they work just to cinch the deal.
Pam: The old ‘whistle while you work’ bit… had they just seen Snow White?

Ann: When Saturday came, true to her word, she loaded up all the kids into the station wagon and drove into town. As the huge striped tent got closer, the kids got more excited, until their mom drove right past the parking area and around to the back of the circus.

Pam: That’s odd!

Ann: She told the kids she’d made an arrangement with the animal trainer for them to see the elephants up close.

Pam: How fun! I guess the whistling paid off! I should start whistling at the office. Maybe I could get a raise.

Ann: Knowing the men where you work, they’d probably think you were flirting. But that could have the same result. Go for it.

So anyway, they jump out of the station wagon and their mom calls them around to the back of the car where she’d opened the hatch back. Cindy thought maybe it was full of rejected veggies from the garden to feed the animals.

Pam: That was a good idea.

Ann: But there were only a couple of huge galvanized tubs and a pile of shovels.

Pam: Ohhhh…I don’t like the sound of this…

Ann: Yep. Turns out, the arrangement with the trainer was to come and “remove” all the elephant dung for her garden. Cindy and the other kids spent hours scooping the poop.

Pam: But she said she’d take them to the circus.

Ann: Technically she did. She never said she’d take them to see the circus she’d said she’d take them to see the animals and clowns. And they did see them. The performers all waved to my cousins as they paraded passed them into the back flap of the tent for the show.

That's Not Where A Stethoscope Goes

Ann: You mean because you’ve survived the empty nest syndrome?

Pam: No, I was reminiscing about all the health scares she gave us when she was so young, and I was marveling at how far she’s come.

Ann: Yeah, those were some scary days. I remember all the cardiologists she had to see and all the tests she went through when she had her open-heart surgery.

Pam: I was remembering one time in particular when she was five and had to go for an evaluation by a pediatric neurologist. We went to the doctor and he checked her strength and balance by having her stand on one foot, hop on each foot, and walk a line heel to toe.

Ann: I had a cop do that to me once.

Pam: Then he checked her reflexes and coordination by having her catch and throw a bounced tennis ball and kick a rolled tennis ball back to him. Finally, he used the stethoscope to listen to the blood flow in the carotid arteries in her neck and in her temples.

Ann: She must have thought she was at the playground.

Pam: She did. She was all smiles with her new glittery pencil and sticker as we left the doctor’s office and road the elevator down to the parking garage.

Ann: Pediatricians are great, aren’t they? They can take a traumatic situation, make it fun, and still learn all they need to know. So did Kate like him?

Pam: That’s what I asked her on the way down in the elevator. She said she thought he was nice and lots of fun but that she didn’t think he was a very good doctor.

Ann: What? Where’d she get that idea?

Pam: I was curious about that until she said, “He was nice but I know he’s not a very good doctor because he didn’t even know the right way to use a stethoscope. It’s supposed to go on my chest!”

Ann: How funny. Knowing her, I’m surprised she didn’t correct him.

Pam: I was a little surprised myself. In fact, I asked her why she didn’t and she said, “Gosh, mommy, I didn’t want to embarrass him.”