Month: March 2011

This story originally appeared in the March 17, 2011, issue of The Trussville Tribune…

Confession, they say, is good for the soul, so in an effort to nurture my inner being, here goes: On occasion, my mouth gets away from me, and a bad word slips out.

Yes, I realize the preacher might read this and deem me unfit to ever again serve in a church-related capacity. But I hope he’ll take into consideration that I’m at least semi-repentant before he condemns me to the ranks of the Baptist benchwarmers.

I have to say, though, for some situations only a bad word will do. Like the time the edge of my thumb slipped under the thrumming needle of a sewing machine. Or the time my computer deleted an eight-page paper I’d failed to save. Or the time I was experiencing a beyond-bad hair day and gave my boss an unvarnished opinion of my Muppet-like ‘do.

“Now, June,” he deadpanned in reply. “Do you really know what Hell looks like?”

I had to admit I didn’t.

Mama says I inherited any potty mouth tendencies I might possess from Daddy’s side of the family, but that’s not entirely true. Certain individuals on her side of the family have been known to utter choice words, too.

MeeMaw Flowers, for instance, could string naughty words together with admirable ease, figuratively handing various nursing home personnel their heads on a platter every few days.

And at around age two, one of my young cousins on Mama’s side, now a minister’s wife and mother of two, plainly blurted out a cuss word while I was babysitting her one day. When I laughed, she said it again – and a couple more times for good measure. Her mother was not similarly amused.

As I recall, Mama herself even let a zinger or two fly my way when I was a teenager. (She’ll deny it, of course, so don’t even bother to ask her about it.) But parents of teenagers will quickly tell you an occasional bad word is allowed.

“You’ve got to let off steam somehow,” said a friend whose progeny were 14 and 16 when I broached the subject with her, “and letting loose with a cuss word now and then beats a murder rap.”

For weeks afterward, I prayed for the safety of her children.

As far as Daddy’s side of the family, well, I’ve heard plenty of stories about his relatives’ colorful turns of phrase. But none could quite compare to MeeMaw Harper’s style. She spelled her bad words, apparently thinking if she didn’t meld the letters into a single sound, it didn’t count as cussing. I doubt, however, that anyone ever mistook her for a spelling bee champ.

She once referred to a person who frequently got on her nerves as “that d-a-m woman,” never realizing she’d done nothing more than call the object of her wrath a water-barricading female. So I guess you could say MeeMaw Harper never really cussed; she only meant to.

But my all-time favorite family bad word tale concerns my oldest nephew, Ryan, at age six. Upon arriving home from school one day, he reported that a kid in his first grade class had been sent to the principal’s office for saying not only the D-word, but the S-word, too, and the elementary school grapevine was abuzz with the news.

Horrified, my sister-in-law nevertheless maintained the presence of mind to delve a little further into the matter before jumping to any conclusions as to what her baby’s innocent ears had heard.

“Ryan, you know those are bad words, and you’re not supposed to say them,” she said slowly. “But just this once, I want you to whisper in Mommy’s ear what you think the D-word and the S-word are.”

Dreading his response, she leaned down to hear his reply.

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “Will you tell me?”

Now in his mid-twenties, Ryan has likely since learned what those words are. But just in case he hasn’t, I certainly won’t be the one to tell him. Talk about a murder rap. His mother would kill me.

Either that, or she’d tell the preacher, and I’m probably in enough trouble with him as it is.

This story originally appeared in the March 3 issue of The Trussville Tribune…

As I write this, I’m propped up in bed with the laptop, and my two Chihuahua sidekicks are huddled under the covers at my feet. It’s early Saturday, and even though the temperature is still cool outside, the sun is shining in all its glory.

A beautiful morning like this is perfect for pulling on a light jacket and going for a walk, which I’m just liable to do before the day is over. I might even pull a couple of leashes out of the household critters’ storage cabinet and take the sidekicks along.

In the meantime, though, I’m staying put. Hiding, actually. Laying low.

Jimmie, you see, is outside, cleaning up the most recent round of debris dropped on our front yard by Mother Nature and five oak trees. I, quite frankly, had rather be writing than raking, and I know if I so much as set foot on the front porch, Jimmie will stick some kind of gardening implement in my hand and expect me to use it.

When he cheerfully bounded out of bed and announced his plans to spend the morning raking out flowerbeds and bagging leaves, I suspected those plans somehow included me. So I quickly pulled the laptop onto the bed, mumbled something about a Monday deadline and fell into my “busy writer” routine.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’m anti-yard work. I like a clean yard as much as the next person. I just like it better when somebody else is doing the cleaning. Lawnmowers are noisy, and in my hands, hedge clippers spell trouble for the boxwoods. And if you’ve ever stepped on an upturned rake and bonked yourself in the face or slashed an ankle with the business end of a weed eater, you understand me when I say yard work is a pain.

Rest assured, however, I’m more than willing to get involved on the supervising end. I can tell Jimmie what grass needs cutting, what tree needs trimming or what weed needs eating all day long. I’m sure he appreciates my help in that regard (about as much as I appreciate him telling me his mother made better meatloaf than I do). But for the most part, I avoid the actual doing of yard work – except, that is, when it comes to planting flowers. Then it’s a different game altogether.

First of all, the tools for planting flowers are much smaller, more manageable and, therefore, less dangerous than those sharp-edged, gas-powered or battery-operated gadgets required for doing yard work these days. Secondly, flowers are pretty. And thirdly, I get a huge kick out of watching something I poked in the ground a few weeks earlier – or in the case of bulbs, maybe years earlier – thrive and grow.

And harking back to my childhood days, when I could sling together the meanest mud pie on the block in a chicken potpie tin saved from supper the evening before, I love getting my hands dirty. Gardening gloves be hanged. There’s nothing like digging in the dirt barehanded and squishing the mud between my fingers. I’m sure the earthworms don’t like it, but that’s the risk they take when they choose to settle in my territory.

Of course that explains the usual state of my manicure – or rather, I guess, the lack thereof. I always manage to scrape the dirt out from under my fingernails so I’ll at least look presentable, but that’s about as good as it gets throughout the spring and early summer.

But until it’s time to put in some springtime bedding plants, I’ll continue to make my lame excuses and hunker in the house whenever Jimmie is working in the yard. After all, it’s for his own good. I wouldn’t want to pose a threat to him or any of the neighbors with those dangerous yard tools. And if he needs me to supervise, well, I’ll cross that bridge if it happens. But I’d probably I’d come out of hiding for that.