“I’ve drinkin the kool-aid”

Craziness…

The Commander frequently tells me that I was a “wanted” child. And I guess I probably was, since she got married at 22 (yes, really, it was during WWII) and didn’t manage to have a child (me) until she was 33, despite quite a bit of trying. And that’s all fine except it always leaves me kind of scratching my head thinking something like, “Well, I may have been a wanted child but I’m not sure I turned out to be exactly what you wanted.” We actually had a version of that conversation at a birthday party once. Actually, it was Radical Betty’s last birthday and I mean last as in she didn’t live to see the next one. Alas. And, in that photoooo, where the veddy veddy proppa Commander is making sure that R.B. has a napkin (a proppa one), it is almost possible to ignore the bottle of smart gas and just see the vibrancy that my father’s sister possessed throughout her entire life and right through the last months. This is the woman who got totally pi**ed off back in the Jurassic Age once when the GG, yers truly, and RB’s husband Duke refused to go x-c skiing when the temperature was 25 degrees below zero. We’ll go to Tim Horton’s instead, thankye veddy much. By the way. I have seen the veddy veddy proppa Commander trying to talk with alfalfa sprouts sticking out of her mouth and rumor has it (I wasn’t there) that she earned her Thud Club rapern* by drinking a wee bit o’ whiiiine (with Radical Betty) and subsequently falling down in the water on Birch Point Beach. Proppa indeed!

Where the heck was I? I’m not sure but it was a loverly party and, when The Comm and I did that little bit of schtick about the wanted child right in front of everybody at the party (yes, I live on the edge, why do you ask), EVERYBODY LAUGHED!!! Even those people who really didn’t know me very well, or at all, could probably tell that I am, well, I am MEEEEEE. And I am a little crazy. Sometimes. That is all.

Those two gals in the photoooo were friends for almost 70 years. Radical Betty was in the same dorm as The Commander at good old Moo U (Mary Mayo, roight?). The oldest child in the Fin Family (Dr. Don) was about to become a father for the first time. The Commander actually had an automotive vee-hickle at her disposal. I’m probably mangling this story but I *think* she drove Radical Betty and Radical Betty’s older brother aka my dad somewhere (Ann Arbor, maybe? or possibly Day-Twa?) to see their brother’s new baby, my beautiful cousin Jan, first child in my generation. I’ll stop there and we’ll get The Comm to guest-blahg the story some day but that would be where she met the guy I call The Old Coot or Grandroobly on this blahg. My father.

And… By the way… I hope nobody else got confused by the photoooo I posted on this here blahg yesterday. It is MY computer that is displaying that nasty message. Not yours. It is a photooooo… Heee hee snort. Love you, Moom.

* You are thinking “what the heck is a rapern?” and “it doesn’t sound very politically correct”. It is what a very cute once three-year-old Sherman boy called an “apron”. The Sherman kids were almost like cousins to us when we were young.

2 Responses to ““I’ve drinkin the kool-aid””

  1. Jan Miller Says:

    Thanks Anne for a wonderful memory of Betty and your Mom!

  2. Uncly Uncle Says:

    I remember when I met Betty back around 1981 or so. She was over 60 and took us cross country skiing and kicked our butts. We could not keep no matter how we tried. Good post Anne.