Monday, September 04, 2006

My mother, the hooker

My mother was born the ninth of 18 kids. Yes, they were all from the same two parents, and my grandparents both lived to a ripe old age. But, when you raise 18 kids, everyone has a job. My mom's job was to cut the heads off the chickens, so grandma could cook them for dinner.

Needless to say, my mom is not a squeamish woman. So, when we were visiting them and my city bred children decided that they wanted to go fishing, she agreed to take them. Off we went to my uncle's house to borrow poles. I'm sure Uncle Jim thought it was more than a little humorous, especially considering the fact that my dd is a vegetarian, but nonetheless, he loaned us the poles.

Mom knows my ds is a bit accident prone, so as we were getting into the van, I could hear her giving them a warning about being careful with the poles, so you don't get hurt. As I'm climbing in, I suddenly hear her say, with a rather panicked voice "I'm hooked, I'm hooked." Yep -- we hadn't even gotten the poles in the car before we caught a 5'5" red headed fish.

My uncle assured her that he could fetch that hook out, no problem. After a couple of yanks, my mom was a bit more pale, and off we headed to the doctor to get it removed. Turns out that the way to get it out is to wrap a shoelace around it in a certain way, then give it a yank, and it'll fly out across the room. Mom and I were a bit incredulous at how strange it looked, but it did work.

Just when Mom was recovering from her embarrassment, we walked out to the desk in time to hear someone loudly saying "where's the fish hook lady?" There stood my dad, ready to rescue his damsel in distress, who effectively crawled out the door to the car.

Yes, we did go fishing and no, they didn't catch a thing. But I've called my mom a hooker ever since.