A story to help Aunt Bee keep us on board...

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Best Behaviour

To understand my story, you need to know two things:

First, Sunday dinner at our house was something of an event. We had the best food, roast beef with mashed potatoes and gravy or fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy , fresh or frozen peas instead of canned, fresh raw vegetables, and pie with ice-cream for desert. Yummy! We were always all still dressed in our Sunday best from going to church and Mom put a table cloth on the table and used the good china. We also often had guests to eat with us.

Second, when we had celery in the house, Mom liked to keep it standing on end in water because this kept it crisper. She had a special jug that she used for doing that.

On this particular Sunday, Mom had invited some people who were some of the nicest in the church. I was on my very best behaviour, I wanted them to like us so they’d come back to eat with us again. Mom was fussing (like most Moms do) and she noticed that I hadn’t had any of the raw vegetables yet, so she "suggested" that perhaps I might like to try some of the celery. Being on my best behaviour, I agreed immediately and promptly stuck my hand into the milk jug and started fishing around in it. Ooops!! You see, what Mom hadn’t mentioned was that because of the Sunday setting, she had put milk into the jug we normally kept our celery in and put the celery onto a special small platter. You should have seen the look of amazement on our guests’ faces! So much for best behaviour:-)

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), May 12, 2001

Answers

BTW, the title of this thread is a family joke. It seems that my cousin was not quite tall enough to see into the sink really well, but loved to "help Mom". One Sunday, she decided to help clear the table and took as many plates as she could carry over to the sink and dropped them in saying, "Help-ping". They used their good china on Sundays 'til then too... :-)

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), May 12, 2001.

Too funny Tricia! :-) I started a Mother's Day thread and invited the moms to share a humorous motherhood story. As for one of the stories of what I did to MY mom:

We had an Evangelist over for coffee and dessert after church on a Sunday night. He commented to my mom about how lovely and clean our home was. Being the truthful child that I was, I volunteered, "You should see under my and Deanna's (my sister) bed! There's a ton of dust under there!" I know I must have really embarrassed my mom. Fortunately, she didn't kill me. ;-)

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), May 13, 2001.

LOL Tricia. I can just picture the whole scene. It must have been funny (afterwards ;-)

Marie has trained the not-so-little ones to do most of the help-ping 'round the kitchen - ever since I wanted to make her something for a surprise and almost burned the house down. Who knew that chestnuts could explode! Sheesh! Fact is, she doesn't like me in 'her kitchen' at all. Maybe its better that way :-)

-- (sonofdust@mothers.day), May 13, 2001.

My number three sister was about two and a half; the youngest of all (at that time) was a few weeks old.

Squalling and crying, as they sometimes do at that age.

So "big sister" decied to help - and since she just learned to drink from a cup, she knew how to "feed" the baby too....right?

Goes to the sink, fills a big glass with water. Goes back to the bassinet, stands on tip toes to look over the edge, takes careful aim, ......

And dumps the whole glass right on target!

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), May 14, 2001.

Kid wants to help do dishes. Kid throws a glass into the sink. Glass shatters. We clean up the broken glass and show kid how to put glasses in the sink gently. Kid slowly and gently places several glasses into the sink...then throws a steel pot on top of them. We clean up the broken glass and show kid how to put...

-- helen (help_is_h@rd.to.find), May 14, 2001.

Sorry to have gone missing, I've had the 'flu which kinda segued into viral pneumonia. But I'm better now!

Robert, your sister might not have done a great job at feeding the baby, but I'll bet that the shock stopped the crying... for a few seconds :-)

Helen.... LOLOLOL

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), May 19, 2001.