#59– “Make sure you have plenty of beds for family.”
I’m not sure why, but it galls me when I have to admit that I’ve adopted one of my mother’s particularly weird idiosyncrasies. Do you ever wonder why nasty words like gall, which is a “tumor-like growth of burrowing insect larvae,” and “the greenish, profoundly bitter-tasting fluid in bile ducts,” aren’t profanity? I didn’t think so, but back to beds and mom’s idiosyncrasies.
My mom’s genetic makeup evidently included a “not enough beds” code. Perhaps it evolved from generations of bed sharing by too many kids. I don’t know, but whatever the reason, we had beds all over our house. They were in the bedroom like normal homes, but each of our bedrooms contained at least two full-sized beds. There were also beds on the porch, beds in the living room, and even beds on the front yard. All predicated on mom’s eternal hope that all her chicks (kids) would come home with family in tow.
Let’s see, if everyone was home at the same time, which would be mom’s five kids, their five husbands/wives (total, not each), and their fourteen kids (total, not each) – that would be 24 people (not counting mom). If everyone slept two to a bed, that’s 12 beds. So mom’s logic wasn’t really that off I guess. However, (1) No doubt to mom’s dismay, I don’t think all 24 of us were ever in mom’s house at one time, and (2) That’s probably a good thing, as parricide (killing a close relative – my new word) would have undoubtedly occurred.
I should admit that the beds on the porch and front yard were mostly about the heat of summer and no air conditioning. Central air wasn’t common in our neck of the woods, and the “swamp cooler” wasn’t turned on unless it was so hot the pavement was still liquid at midnight. Click on Read More Below...
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