calliecritturs
Posted : 9/8/2007 6:22:42 PM
ok, you guys, I'll give you the old lady view on that one. *grin*
Once upon a time in a land far far away (damn, no ... we were in FL on vacation and I live here now *sigh*) ... start again.
Once upon a time LONG AGO there lived this young girl (this is a "reality" post) who, at the age of 16 an 'only child', went on vacation with her parents (not like she had any choice in the matter, you understand).
Said parents, as parents often are, were extremely predictable and the first thing they ***always*** did upon arrival at a vacation destination was "go buy groceries". bor-rrrrrinnnnnnnnnnnggggg!!! (after a 12 hour car ride, young girl really didn't want to trail Mom and Dad around the grocery store while they bought the breakfast cereal THEY wanted and ignored anything she wanted *sigh*) sooooooooooooooo maybe she could play the "I'm old enough" card.
"How about if you drop me at the motel BEFORE you do groceries and I'll unpack the suitcases and the kitchen stuff you brought and get it all away and get us unpacked while you two go to the store?" (she offered kindly)
IT WORKED!!
So, putting unpacking the kitchen supplies the Mom brought in an empty kitchen was a snap. Then young girl started unpacking the parental suitcase -- carefully hanging up everything etc. etc. etc. She picked up the last folded item at the BOTTOM of the parental suitcase and there, dab smack literally in the CENTER of the plain bottom of the case was this little tiny box with XXXX on it. [do any of you guys even know what the box of real 'natural lambskin' ones look like? they do still sell them]
Oh ... my .... g ... NO WAY. where do I put those?? If I put THOSE anywhere they'll know I ***TOUCHED*** them, know I saw them ... know I KNOW they have them with them ... they'll know that I know that they still .... OH GAG!!
Ok ... too much information. unfortunately I sleep in the next room from these people ... and they are PARENTS. There are just certain things one never ever wants to know about parents -- brands, times and places among them.
BACK IN THE SUITCASE everything got put. Albeit not quite as neatly as before but hey -- luggage gets knocked around you know????? Young girl put away her own stuff, and managed to be "in the process of" BEGINNING to unpack the parental suitcase when said parental units arrived.
Got away with it. No mention of why the big parental suitcase wasn't totally unpacked. Phew.
Fast-forward 37 years to last fall. Some discussion of couples who had kids and didn't want more, and how difficult they found it to discuss with their growing children, but I guess certain things were difficult to discuss with your kids.
Young girl-now-grown-into-in-her-50's-mature woman says to her mother "Really? such topics might be embarassing? Naw -- I can't imagine it. Not any more than I can imagine what my reaction might be at the age of 16 in unpacking my parent's suitcase on vacation and finding a little square box of 'protection' in the middle of the frigging suitcase and how the heck I was going to exist for the next week knowing my parents had brought those darned things TO USE was just a wee bit more information than I wanted to handle so I might have packed up the suitcase again to avoid the situation!"
My 83 year old mother laughed her butt off and said "well THAT solves that age-old mystery -- I wondered when the heck I ever packed a suitcase THAT badly -- I couldn't figure out what had spooked you THAT badly!!!"