The Family Circa 1969
I love my Mum. She is unique to my eyes, and she’s a very smart cookie. She had a lot to deal with while my two brothers and I were growing up and I think she did the best she knew how. Some of her tactics however were quite intriguing as I look back.
For instance, as a child we would go shopping together in the department store in Los Altos, California where I spent the early part of my childhood. One day we were riding the escalator and she told me not to stick my head over the railing. I think I did so anyways, so the next time we were there she told me the story about the little girl who got her head cut off riding up the escalator (she didn’t even tell me to not stick my head over the railing again because I might have caught on that she was trying to teach me a lesson). She said the little girl stuck her head out too far and it got chopped off by the plastic divider between floors. Well I never forgot that. I was completely fascinated and asked so many questions every time we rode an escalator from then on that I think she may have wished she had never mentioned it. It did, however, keep me from sticking my head over the railing.
When we moved to Canada I was still quite young – about 7. We lived in a small town in the countryside for the first two years. My Mum liked visiting old graveyards and reading the tombstones. It was on one of these trips that we passed an old barn and my mother told me the story of the little girl who ran into an old barn to chase down her ball. She fell through the floor and died. No doubt this has actually happened on occasion so it wasn’t a complete fabrication. And once again I was fascinated. Every time I looked at a barn from then on I would remember that story.
Mum’s coup de gras came when I was in highschool a few years later. I had the terrible habit of leaving my curling iron plugged in after styling my ever-so-popular Farrah Fawcett hairstyle in the morning. That was in the days before they had auto shut-offs. My mother kept telling me to remember to shut off my curling iron, but I kept forgetting. One day I got a call at the school. My mother said in her iciest tone that she would be picking up me and my best friend, Lillian, from school that afternoon. She wouldn’t tell me what was wrong but I knew something was up.
She picked us up and drove towards Lillian’s house. On the way she said there had been a fire. She said it was from the curling iron and trust me my Mum could win an academy award for her performance. I didn’t believe her at first but she didn’t cave and when I asked about my cat she said she didn’t make it out. Well I burst into tears. Lillian got out at her house and we drove home with me bawling in the back seat. When we got home I ran upstairs (it was a rather large house so it didn’t surprise me that there was no evidence of fire in the foyer). There had been no fire. My cat was sleeping on my bed. I called Lillian to tell her, and she said my Mum was ‘crazy’ or something to that effect but that she was glad everything was okay.
You would think I might be a little scarred by that incident and perhaps I was because from then on I became paranoid I had left my curling iron on. I remember calling from the payphone at school on many occasions to ask her to check. Even to this day I double-check my hair straightener and stove burners are off before I leave for work. And, thanks to my brother, I unplug anything that contains a heating element – like my toaster and portable heater. So I guess you could say it’s a good thing…a few weeks ago a guy’s whole house burned down because he went out and left a battery charger plugged in. I guess his mother never lied to him…
