MEMORIES

My grandparent grew up in the dirty thirties. With 18 kids to feed and clothe they were very poor and re-used everything they could. This became a lifelong habit with them. One winter they were living with us in the city. For breakfast we had oatmeal, which was our usual meal. There was quite a bit left over. Sometimes we would eat it the next day for breakfast or throw it out. Well this one day grandma made us our lunch. We came in from school to find she had taken the leftover oatmeal and made little patties out of them and fried them up for us. Needless to say, we all went to school hungry that day and our garbage had a weird meal when grandma wasn't looking.

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One summer my mother decided my sister and I needed a haircut. My sister was only about 5 years old at the time and I was about 8. Mom took us to a hairdresser and the hairdresser began to give us the latest cut. A duck tail haircut. I was o.k. with my hair cut but my sister absolutely hated hers. She ended up wearing this woolen babushka for the rest of the summer. Even at that age she was fashion conscious. The worse part was that she would follow me around where ever I went and I had to explain to people why she was wearing this stupid babushka in the middle of summer. To this day, she very rarely cuts her hair.

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When I was quite young I was not the brightest colour in the box of crayons. One day I ended up falling out of my high chair. I was crying and when my dad came I told him what had happened. He said "How did you do that?" So I proceeded to show him by climbing back up, ready to throw myself down before he stopped me.

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He would buy bubble gum on his way home from work and hide it in his pockets. He used to hang his coat in our bathroom at the time. After supper, he would go into the bathroom to have his daily you know what and would come out and give me bubble gum. When I would ask him where he got it, he would say "I pooped it." I would believe him. Then I would beg him to go poop me some more bubble gum and he would say he didn't have to poop then and would wait till the next night.

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I would believe everything my dad said. Like the time he had me believing I could pee music. I would go into the bathroom to pee and he would whip out his violin and play while I was in the bathroom. Then when I came out he had the violin hidden again. I actually believed I was peeing music.

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One of my most embarrassing moments happened after I gave birth to my last daughter. I was determined to breast feed as I hadn't with my first born. So I was breast feeding. I guess I hadn't prepared myself right for this as my nipples were extremely sore and cracking. The nurses said we could put tea bags on our breasts to help the pain. That morning I ordered tea for breakfast. After the tea bags had cooled I placed one tea bag on my left breast and one on my right breast. There I was laying naked from the waist up letting my boobs have their morning tea. I had the curtain drawn so no one could see. In walks the doctor and with a look of shock on his face he says "Oops pardon me." and backs out of the opening. Then when I got myself together he came back in. It was only later that it struck me that I could put the tea bags IN MY BRA to ease the pain. The look on the doctors face - Priceless. My embarrassment after I realized - extreme and funny.

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Have a very memorable day.