The Day Jill Tried To Kill Her Mother

This story is a hoot in retrospect, but at the time, I didn't laugh much.  After all, how many mothers can say that their daughter ran over them with the car?  Today we can laugh at how comical, or frightening, the scene must have been for anyone who happened to see this assault in progress.  I'm sure they also got an earful.

Jill says it was the afternoon that she had passed her driver's test and received her driver's license.  I declare that this is just an excuse for dimwitted behavior in a moment of confusion.  We both were certainly confused, though for different reasons. 

Jill, along with her friend Dawn, was driving somewhere, perhaps to take Dawn home, and I was going to walk the few blocks from our house to downtown Havelock.  Jill agreed to drop me off on her way through town, so I went along riding in the back seat, passenger side.  I wanted to go to the drug store, so I asked her to stop directly across from it.  I remember distinctly saying the word "stop" in my request.  Evidently, she didn't quite get my meaning.

Unfortunately for me there was a car behind us, and I'm sure that makes a new driver a little nervous and uncomfortable.  No new driver wants cars honking at them on their first outing, though I am positive that wouldn't have effected me if it had been my mother as the victim.  Nevertheless, as I opened the back door and began to step out, Jill was paying more attention to the car behind her, nevermind that I was halfway out of the car hanging desparately to the car door.  Jill's car never stopped.  It just kept rolling.  Forward.  Over my foot and up onto my ankle.  All the while I was saying to her, louder and louder, "Jill.  Jill! Stop!! JILL!!!  STOP!!!"

Finally Jill stopped with my foot still braced between the asphalt and the rubber tire.  "BACK UP!"  I screamed at her.

She pulled forward.

"NO!  REVERSE!"  I screamed it over and over.  What part of this didn't she get?  I was being run over by a two-thousand pound machine, and I didn't want to die!  But poor Jill was so befuddled and frightened that she didn't know where the gearshift was.  I still think she was frightened of the car behind her.  Running over her dear, sweet, helpless, dying mother just wasn't important at the moment.  She just didn't want to hold up traffic!

When Jill finally put the car in reverse, and I had freed my foot from under her car, I finished stepping out of the car, and, in severe pain, I stepped away from the car and slammed the car door.  Jill shifted into drive and quickly drove away, leaving me standing in the middle of Havelock Avenue, watching her leave me in the proverbial dust and wondering how I was going to hobble around town with a broken foot or ankle and bruises up to my knee, not to mention how was I going to get home?

My wounds were very limited.  Regrettably, but thankfully for my daughter.  I was able to navigate my errands and walk back home again.  My ankle swelled quite a bit, and it was, indeed, bruised.  But I had no real reason to do anything more than scold Jill's ability to become befuddled at my expense.  I'm sure it took a very long time for me to get up enough nerve to let Jill deliver me anywhere in her car again.  And now we laugh about it, or at least, she does.

Telling On Myself

I'm always preaching to members of my family about speaking clearly and distinctly because I have begun to lose some of that wonderful gift that God gives most of us, the blessed sense of hearing. I haven't reached the hearing aide stage yet, but that sense has diminished somewhat, and I am very sensitive about not being able to hear as clearly as I have in the past. I have great empathy for those who cannot hear.

I wandered in my mind this morning to two separate occasions from long ago when I had misunderstood certain phrases or titles because I either didn't hear it spoken clearly or maybe I just wasn't listening, and these when I was a much younger girl.

When Richard Nixon was president of the U.S. we often heard about his home estate in California. One day at work my friends were talking about it as I approached them. "Sam Clemente," I echoed what I had heard them say. "I have heard of him somewhere. Where do I know that name from?" They all laughed and answered that they were speaking of the President's estate, San Clemente. "Oh, yeah. I knew I'd heard that before." Truly, I needed to pay closer attention to the newscasts.

The first time I made such an error I was ten years younger, and at least I didn't have to face my embarrassment immediately. It has given my own children much laughter whenever they recall my telling of the story. Truly, I do understand, because in my mind it is funny now.

It was circa 1966, the years of much partying and dancing and enjoying our youth. We spent most of our Friday or Saturday nights going to a small town night club/dive to drink and dance to live music played by upstart local bands. Some of those bands went on to record some pretty good music, and a couple of them became mid-western legends and played together for many years. The bands played the popular music of the day while we danced the nights away.

One night, as often was done, I approached the band during a pause between songs and asked them to play one of my favorite songs of the day. I yelled as loud as I could to call out to them over the noise of the crowd even though I was no farther than four feet from them. "Will you please play State Trooper?" They looked at one another then looked at me with questioning eyes. "What?" one of them called to me. "STATE TROOPER!!!" I screamed it as loud as I could, and still they just stared at me with blank expressions. I made my request one more time, but all they could answer was that they didn't know the song and had never heard of it.

I was pretty disgusted by that time. I had heard this band play on a number of occasions and had heard them play this song. I just couldn't figure out why they weren't understanding me.

I have to admit that it was a few years before I finally realized why my request had fallen on deaf ears. And I am so thankful to this day that the guys in that band really didn't have a clue as to what song I was really wanting. At least, I hope they never figured it out. And I'm glad I didn't mention it to the group I was with so they didn't have the chance to realize my error. They certainly would have gotten a good laugh. You see the musical group that made this song popular was The Beatles, and the song that I loved to hear was "Day Tripper."