Tag: Mistake

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The Parade

I flattened the little kid. I walked into her full stride and knocked her to the pavement. As she lay there stunned, I bent down to help her up. All the while trapped inside my Pig-From-The-House-Of-Straw costume.

Some friends and I had signed up to be in the local town parade. We were assigned the “Three-little-pigs” and the “Big-bad-wolf” costumes. We got into the fluffy costumes, affixed the oversized heads, and took our assigned place in the parade line-up. Always a crowd-pleaser, we would chase each other around and make exaggerated huffing and puffing antics all along the parade route.

Wearing a giant pig costume is not as easy as it looks. For starters, the costume smelled AWFUL. You perspire like crazy in those things, as did the people who wore them before you. With the affixed head, there is very little air circulation. So basically you are walking a parade route in the sun in a fuzzy, sealed plastic bag full of sweat. Not pleasant.

Secondly, the parade route itself is not so straightforward. There was a marching band in front of us and a motorized float behind us (ironically, given that we were dressed as pigs, the float was promoting the local vegetarian club. True). We had to beware of all the stopping and starting lest we crash into the band or get run over ourselves by the float. And with many horses and carriages involved, lets just say there were a lot of “leavings” along the parade route. A lot.

Finally, the visibility out of the costume is near zero. We could only see through a screen in the pigs nostrils. We were constantly straining to see one another, keeping an eye out for leavings, the band, and the float. That’s where the kid comes in.

She probably loved the Three Little Pigs. Who can blame her? So she broke ranks from the roadside crowd and ran to give me a hug. With no peripheral vision, I never saw her coming. WHAMMO. Down she went with a pork knuckle to her chest.

Of course I was horrified. I bent over to help her up. She freaked out. Again, who could blame her? The giant pig that just flattened her was now towering above her, unable to communicate through a stupid costume that smelled of sweat and horse urine. From one nostril I could see the horrified mother. From the other, the father encouraging me to just move along. Which I did, in haste.

When I got home my father had taped the parade on our VCR. As fate would have it the incident occurred in front of the TV tower where they filmed the parade. The commentary went something like this:  “Well Ben, here come those rascally little pigs and the big bad wolf. Always a crowd fave… Good heavens…. Did that pig just….I believe it was the House of Straw…Oh dear… I hope she’s OK…

I hope so too.

 

[If you know others who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

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The Puddle – 29/01/2018

Sitting in the puddle of urine caused me to reflect on my life. Particularly since the urine was not my own.

We arrived at the dementia care facility and wheeled our dear family member into the garden to enjoy some sunshine. On route we passed the activities room where a singer of modest talent was belting out “Margaritaville” to a few dozen facility residents. As we rolled by, our family member shoved her fingers in her ears. Dementia has not diminished her musical scruples.

We parked the wheelchair in the garden. I sat down on a cushioned park bench. As I did there was a loud and prolonged squishing sound. My trousers became instantly soaked.  Several cups of suspicious liquid drained from the cushion to the pavement below.

Only then did I notice another facility resident ambling away from the scene of the crime. Her saturated sweat pants told the whole story.

Standing beside me, my ever sympathetic wife could not stop laughing. A duty nurse promptly came to clean up the mess and take the cushion off for laundering. She managed to choke out the words “occupational hazard” between peals of laughter. Where is the humanity, I ask you?

This incident did not register with our family member at all. She chattered away in a happy state and within a world, sadly, all her own. She was clearly energized by the sunshine and a few power naps.

As we went back inside we could hear the entertainer down the hall. He had passed around little tambourines and was lustily leading the facility residents in a version of “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown”. However, the residents soon lost the beat, along with the general plot of the song. The resulting chaos sounded something like: “He was Bad (bang) Bad (bang) Leroy Brown (bang), bad(bang) est (bang, bang, bang) man in(bang) the (bang, bang, bang, bang, bang).”

My wife made me strip off my trousers in the parking lot. I rode home in my undies, humming “Margaritaville”, reflecting on the heartbreaking beauty of this life sublime.

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them the link to WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

[This story is dedicated to newborn Evelina. May you love this world as much as your namesake.]

Photo credit: Horizons Unlimited

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Scandinavian Furniture – 30/10/2017

A certain Scandinavian furniture store, which I probably cannot name on a public blog post, is the last train stop before hell.

Many people like it. “It’s great value”, they say, “so many practical things and so affordable. I get a sense of accomplishment from assembling the furniture I just bought”. This is willful delusion.

Every minute spent in that store is an admission of failure. None of us choose to be deep in the bowels of the labyrinth with glassy eyed kids melting down all around us. We are there because we cannot afford to be somewhere else buying furniture that we actually like.

Each purchase is an exercise in compromise: you know it is bad quality, but we buy it because we have to. Sitting in our home, it reminds us that we just spent $200 on lacquered particle board and ate meatballs made from horsemeat. And then it breaks.

Products are named by cleverly rearranging letters from the Scandinavian spelling of only three words: “underachiever”, “futile” and “self-esteem” (which is actually two words). Fake accents are then thrown in to give products their mysterious Euro-allure. This is the furniture equivalent of Häagen-Dazs.

The company motto should be: “Where Relationships go to Die”.  Couples enter the store with dreams of the future they will build together. They end up seething in the check-out lanes, their ankles gouged from the person with the extended cart in line behind them, craving a $1 hot dog despite being vegan. This is followed by the silent car ride home and furniture assembly with the little allen keys: a guaranteed relationship-ender.

Guess where my wife and I just spent our afternoon? Thankfully we have plenty of humour and whiskey to regain our perspective. And no doubt we are soon to return, drawn by the meatballs like a moth to hell’s flame.

 

NB: Image credit to Reddit User dionysage