Posted 5-15-19
“Mom is going to wring my neck!” whimpered an Applegate child hundreds of times after some nondescript/stupid thing we had done.
(Editor’s note: Mom was (somewhat oddly) fond of telling the story of the first time she saw her frail, dainty momma “wring the neck” of a chicken at the farm. –Disclaimer: if you are younger than 30, this may freak you out to the point of needing a safe space to sort out feelings— Green Grandma, as I was creatively wont to call her because she lived in a green house, would find the evening’s chicken, grab it by the neck and whirl it around until its talking part was separated from its walking part. Mom would laugh as she would tell of it flopping and running around like…uhhh….errrr….a chicken with its head cut off. She told this story with enough humor to make you smile but with enough cockeyed glimmer in her eye to wonder if someone who laughed at such would consider such treatment on a disobedient child. 🙂 Despite the fact that we deserved to do this original chicken dance, we survived.
Oh the things I alone did deserving of a neck-wringing! Here are but a few examples:
- Countless broken windows with baseballs, BBs and/or other basic ballistics.
- Played with fire a tad too much around the house, in the garage, etc…
- Sledded off the house in the late 1970’s. (Before global cooling, then swine/chicken/bird flu, then acid rain, then global warming, then climate change changed our snow patterns, we had a pretty decent stretch of years with deep snow…deep enough to stack up and sled off the house onto.
- Played Refrigerator Daredevil at my friend Matt’s house. We took turns padding ourselves with pillows and climbing inside of a fridge box and flinging ourselves end-over-end down a long set of stairs to his basement.
- The same friend and I used to pee in his electric sump pump to avoid having to walk up stairs to the bathroom during all-night Monopoly marathons. Editor’s note to those under 30: we didn’t have internet, and phone cords only went so far, so we all-nightered playing board games.
- We grew up with a commercial strawberry farm across the street from us. (Drooling sounds). I sat on my front porch with my BB gun and shot at tomatoes, that were planted at the ends of the farm, as my own little red targets. (After all, I saw Attack of the Killer Tomatoes on cable at a friend’s and didn’t want to take a chance). Turns out my neighbor form 3 doors down, our school principal (I only spell it with the “Pal” at the end because it is correct), had subleased the spot out to sell tomatoes and, go figure, customers were not fond of BBs in their maters.
- My friend Stuart and I got kicked out of the creek (!) for digging a boat race trench from a spring to the water’s edge. Go figure…the erosion ravine that would inevitably result made the farmer and the cows unhappy.
- I, while guarding my sister’s fort in the garage from my brother, smacked him with a 2×4 with a nail on it. Off to the hospital again…the 100th time for the Applegate boys. Heck, we should get a prize for such a record, not a neck-wringing. Dad deserves a lot of credit here for patience as he had to pay for such a revolving door of ER visits.
- Speaking of paying, between me and my brother, we probably broke or lost 25 retainers. These plastic devices are designed to keep your teeth straight after years of braces…and probably cost $50 apiece.
- I was a biter. See previous posts. LOL
- I crushed my dad’s friends with the golf cart enough times to get me banned from driving duty while playing.
- I was a pitcher and a rock-thrower from an early age. Throwing a rock to a player wearing a glove= works great. Throwing creek rocks of a similar size at unsuspecting family and friends=doesn’t work as well. Again, fewer friends willing to hang out with my siblings at our family events. It isn’t that I could throw that hard. See me pitching here in 1988:
I guess it was the whole “Rock to the cranium” thing that they didn’t like?
- One time we tied up the babysitter in the “I bet you can’t escape game”…and left her that way… for an uncomfortable amount of time while we left and played outside during my folks’ date night. Note: they went through many babysitters.
- There are hundreds of other, similar stories of my childhood orneriness.
It is worth note that mom TRIED to discipline us, especially insomuch as she could do to keep us from waking up my dad who worked nights . She would spank us with the belt, with a Hot Wheels track or whatever she could find within reach. Problem is she was too nice and it wasn’t much of a deterrent. We knew that is we screamed it would wake dad up and cause her more trouble than it was worth.
In summary, she should have wrung my neck countless times. Instead she loved me and did the best she could with what she had.
Update: the hospice ball is rolling. We have various appointments coming soon. It is hard to imagine that this mess is starting to wind down, but it is. Mom’s biggest physical need right now, besides sores from being in her wheelchair, is her head is sagging and she can’t raise it any more. This seems to be a sign that the end is getting closer as well although it could just be tiredness or weakness. I will be stopping taking new pictures of mom pretty soon out of respect for her. She isn’t looking great these days and I would never want to do anything that would bring her shame. I will continue to post old pictures and tell the story of how great of a woman she is.
I would sure love a cure somehow, but I am resigned to the fact that we are entering the miracle realm with the time we have left. I serve a God of miracles, but I also know He just may need a piano in the heavenly choir too, so who would I be to wish him to not have mom there when He is ready?
#EndALZ