Tag Archives: trunk

Cram

Cram: (v) to fill something by force

 It is impossible that all of the memories we have of another person are going to be good. Matter of fact, a good portion of the people we encounter may end up touching our lives in more negative ways than positive.

Yet it is useless for us to hold onto grudges, believing they grow more valuable over time, like a fine wine. funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Case in point:

Much of the time I spent with my mother was not particularly beneficial to my soul. I suppose this article would be more interesting if I went into the details of those unfortunate moments. But since I have sifted through them, I will spare you the unnecessary remembrance.

What I would like to do is recall one Thursday afternoon—many, many years ago—when my mom showed up to the junior high school to drive me across town to the gymnasium, where I was going to attend basketball practice. I was just thirteen—frisky, ornery and always looking to do something beyond the pale.

I had invited all my friends from the team to catch a ride with me in our family sedan. Little did my mother know, when I asked her if it was alright for some other guys to come along, was that I had invited fourteen.

Now, she was not a woman given to enjoying, enduring, and certainly never planning a prank. I don’t know why, on this particular day, she didn’t put her foot down and object. (Maybe it was because her foot was on the gas pedal.)

But one by one, my friends crawled into the trunk and the back seat, laying on top of each other, giggling like first graders, complaining and breathing heavily, until finally I inserted myself into the front seat, which now held six people including my mother, barely able to close the door behind me.

Once we all were in, she chose to take a long, dramatic pause. Now that I, too, am a parent, I’m sure her thinking was:

A. What in the hell am I doing?

B. Won’t it be just as much trouble to get them out of the car as drive them?

C. Where is the town cop this time of day? and

D. Could I actually make a stand on this without totally humiliating my son and becoming known as one of “those” adults?

She simply reached up, put the car in drive, and took us the two-and-a-half miles—very, very slowly—to our destination.

She was surrounded by adolescent laughing, gasping, spitting and snorting.

She never said a word.

She never took her eyes off the mirrors.

We arrived, and miraculously, were able to disengage from one another’s flesh, run into the building and start bouncing the balls.

I didn’t thank her, I didn’t look back, and we never spoke of it again.

But there is one day in my memory when my mother, with all her quirks, allowed me to cram fourteen friends into the Chevrolet—without yelling or fussing.

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Axe

Axe: (n) a hand tool with one side of its head forged and sharpened to a cutting edge

It has been my discovery that trying to tell stories about my physical prowess always leaves the hearers a little suspicious.dictionary with letter A

Even though this tends to offend me, I have to be honest and say that when I hear others explain to me how strong they are or how powerful they perceive themselves to be, I am torn between laughing out loud and finding a quick way to exit.

Such was my experience with the axe.

When I was a kid, my dad grew some pine trees which we eventually used as Christmas trees for our house, since there weren’t enough of them to ever constitute a good cord of wood.

So it fell my lot one season to go out and chop down the Christmas tree and bring it back to the house.

I was thrilled (as most fools are on the way to the errand).

I had never wielded an axe. Matter of fact, I was quite pleased that I knew using an axe involved wielding.

So when I arrived next to the pine I had selected, I looked at it and noticed that the trunk was really only about five or six inches across. How hard could this be?

Now, I do not know whether the bottom of my pine was made of steel, or if my axe was not made of actual metal–but I must have hacked at that thing for a good twenty-five minutes, never succeeding in hitting the same place twice.

So when it finally tumbled over (glory be to God) the trunk looked like a pencil that a beaver had chewed up.

I carried it back to the car and into the house, found some way to get it into the tree stand, feeling a great sense of accomplishment.

But I can tell you–for the next week and a half, I could not move my arm nor my shoulder, to such an extent that I missed a day of school, to lay in my bed commiserating over my axe fiasco.

So looking for an adequate summary for this tale, I will borrow a bit of wisdom from my African-American brothers and sisters:

I will never again “axe” for an axe.

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Ammonia

dictionary with letter A

Ammonia: (n) a colorless gas with a characteristic pungent smell which dissolves in water to give a strongly alkaline solution.

I was a punk.

What I mean by that is that I was twenty years old, married with two children and thought I knew everything. And if I didn’t, it wasn’t worth knowing.

We were poor.

Not the kind of ditch-digging poor, but impoverished … because we didn’t have jobs.

We lived in an upstairs hovel that a dump might consider suitable to deposit its trash. We tried to keep it clean, striking an agreement with the cockroaches to only come out at night.

Both of my young sons were in diapers. This was long before the practicality of Pampers. We’re talking about cloth diapers, which we kept in a pail of water in preparation for the laundromat.

So one of my downstairs neighbors took it upon herself to call Children’s Services to report our lack. They showed up and complained that the house smelled like ammonia from the diapers.

It did.

It was very difficult to disguise it. It’s similar to the situation where people own a cat and insist that the kitty litter deters the odor, until you walk in and sniff the air.

Apparently the ammonia thing was a big deal to this lady from Children’s Services. We had to go to a hearing in front of a judge to discuss our dirty laundry.

The lady railed against us in front of the magistrate for a good fifteen minutes. She closed her indictment by describing in vivid detail the stench of the ammonia in our abode.

I have never felt such a collision of emotions. I was embarrassed, enraged, convicted,  confused and basically helpless.

When my accuser was done, “Your Honor” turned to me and asked me if I had anything to say. For the first time in my young adult life, I was speechless.

So the judge stepped in, sensing my plight, and cited, “Don’t all diapers smell like either poop or ammonia?”

Although my attacker tried to object and further elaborate on the odor, the judge silenced her and dismissed the case.

I had experienced the mercy of the court.

I grew up a lot that day. We tried to wash our diapers more often, to prevent ammonia from filling the air.

It is a rather nasty, stinging aroma.

 

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Ammo

dictionary with letter A

Ammo: (n.) informal term for ammunition.

My dad decided to take my older brother and I rabbit hunting.

I didn’t want to go but I had used up all my excuses trying to dodge attending school on undesirable days.

So I was dressing, getting ready for the excursion, when my brother stomped into the room and declared to everyone, “I stored the ammo in the trunk.”

He then posed for a moment, seeking approval over both his deed and proclamation. I quickly ran into the other room and hid in the closet so as not to suffer the intensity of being knuckled on the head by my older sibling.

Once inside, with the door closed, I giggled until I cried. What a doofus!

One thing was sure–all the rabbits in Delaware County were safe for another day.

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