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JUST WAIT TIL YOUR HUSBAND GETS HOME!
by C. L. Halvorson
The little house that I shared with my
parents and my two younger sisters featured a large plate glass picture
window in the living room. Mama loved that window. She saw it as a
canvas to decorate for any holiday no matter how minor. Christmas saw
Santa Claus and snowflakes, hearts for Valentine’s Day, flags on the
Fourth of July, even trees for Arbor Day. Like I said, any excuse to
decorate that window.
Unfortunately, the massive pane was also
a perfect target for the paper boy. Three times in one year he hurled
the newspaper right through that picture window. Daddy would become
more furious with each shattering and threaten the poor paper boy with
his life.
To further ruffle Daddy’s feathers, the
picture window was not the only victim that year. It seems every window
in the house was broken at one point in that short twelve months. They
were, more often than not, broken by either my sisters or me. Daddy
would lecture us on being more careful while wrist deep in glazing
compound, a large glop of which would always ended up glued to his
spectacles.
A few of those windows were broken by
our latest game craze, Mud Ball Toss. Mud Ball Toss was a
simple game. It consisted entirely of building up a nice little pit of
mud, which was easy, thanks to the leaky spigot under the nursery
window, next you gathered up a mud ball, reared back and threw it as
hard as you could at the clapboards on the house. Whoever had the most
mud balls stuck to the house was the winner. Simple, right? We had
another version that involved the bathroom and toilet paper, but we’ll
leave that for another time.
Well now, being of the female persuasion
we occasionally suffered from a condition known as Throwing Like A
Girl. Once in a great while, one of the mud balls would suddenly veer
off course and sail right through a closed window. I’m sure you can
image the end result. Extra points! No, no, no…a broken window, you
silly goose.
This of course, put Daddy back on the
lecture circuit. At the end of the Money Doesn’t Grow On Trees speech (this was one of his all-time favorites by the way) we would hang
our heads, look properly chastened and swear to never do it again. And
believe me we tried our best not to break anymore windows. Fate,
however, had different ideas.
One day, Diana and I were a bit under
the weather so Mama made us stay inside the house to play in the
nursery. Sara was sent outside so that she wouldn’t catch whatever it
was we were coming down with. Sara never did like to play alone. She’s
a people person. She was quite lonely outside by herself and as it
happened, Diana and I were bored in the nursery. Clever child that I
was, I came up with a wonderful game for Diana and I to play. Diana,
being no more than three years old at the time, blindly went along with
whatever I said. I considered this her best trait.
I guess we could call this game Gaslight Your Little Sister. The game consisted entirely of me very
quietly opening the nursery window about four inches or so and calling
out in my very best disguised voice, “Sara, come to the window!” Then I quickly ducked down so that when she turned toward the window it
was empty. Sara stomped up to the window and demanded to know what we
wanted.
“What are you talking about?” I would
innocently ask.
“You called me. What do y’all want?”
“We didn’t call you, did we Diana?”
“No, we didn’t call you,” Diana was
going to make a great side kick one day.
After several rounds of this rather
entertaining activity, Sara had had enough. She flew to the nursery
window with the tray portion of a metal TV tray in her hands. Where she
got the top of the TV tray remains a mystery to this day. You remember
these, right? Those monstrous devices with the tubular aluminum legs
onto which you fastened a tray decorated in the vilest colors imaginable
and huge mutant flowers.
Sara decided she would get even with us
by holding the tray horizontally between her abdomen and the outer wall
beneath the nursery window and repeatedly bang the tray against the
house. Now, the Mud Ball Toss Championships had taken place the
day before and those mud balls were not quite dry. During one of her
retaliatory thrusts, Sara hit one of those still moist missiles which
resulted in the TV tray top slipping and crashing into the window.
All three of us froze in our tracks.
Mama came rushing down the hallway to see what had happened. Much to
her dismay, she saw the broken window glass in the floor and Sara
standing slack jawed outside still clutching a smoking TV tray top.
Mama wanted answers and she wanted them now. Sara spilled her guts and
told everything she knew. She was definitely out of the running for
sidekick.
Suddenly, Mama did not seem to care
whether Sara caught our cold or not and ordered her into the nursery.
Before leaving us to ourselves, she uttered the phrase, which I swear
must be included on Page One of the new mother’s handbook,
“Just wait ‘til your father comes home!”
So wait we did. Daddy came home and
into the nursery to survey the latest damage. Daddy was a redhead and
when he got very angry his whole face turned the same color as his
hair. He had that color now.
“That’s it!” he exclaimed through
clenched teeth. “The very next person to break a window in this house
is going to get a spanking!”
“What if it’s the paper boy again?” I
asked.
“I don’t care who it is! They will get a spanking.”
A few days later, Mama was cleaning up
the result of our most annoying habit, in her opinion. We insisted on
leaving our toys in the hallway. It was a dark hallway, and many was
the time when a ninja trained Barbie would leap out and trip
unsuspecting adults. Her method of cleaning up the mess was to stand in
the hall and toss our toys into the toy chest which was, you guessed it,
under a window in our room. I clearly remember sitting on the top bunk
and watching as my Rub-A-Dub Dolly crashed through the window to land in
the azaleas.
Sudden unbridled joy filled my sisters
and me. We remembered Daddy’s edict proclaiming that whoever broke the
next window would receive a spanking. Oh, happy day! Now, they would
get a taste of their own medicine and with luck we would get to witness
it!
Diana placed one hand on her hip,
waggled a finger of the other hand at our mother and exclaimed, “You
just wait ‘til your husband gets home!”
We abandoned the nursery and its
delights to park ourselves on the orange Herculon upholstered sofa in
the living room where we waited with great anticipation for Daddy’s
arrival and to bear witness to justice dispensed. Occasionally, we were
heard to chant, “Mama’s gonna get a spanking!”
Mama ignored us and went to prepare
dinner. After what seemed an eternity, Daddy pulled into the driveway.
We could barely contain ourselves. This was a red letter day in the
History of Kids! Daddy walked through the front door and was surprised
to find the three of us lined up on the couch, smiling at him.
“What’s up?” Daddy inquired, clearly
amused.
“Your children have something to tell
you,” Mama curtly informed him as she emerged from the kitchen.
“Is that so? Well, what’s up?” he asked
as he sank into a matching orange recliner.
We fell over each other trying to be the
first to tell him the glad news. Finally, clamping my hands over my
sister’s mouths, I informed him breathlessly, “Mama broke a window and
you have to spank her. You promised.”
“Is that so? Carol, did you break a
window?” Mama did not look at all amused even though Daddy certainly
was.
“Yes, I did but…” she began.
“No buts!” Daddy interrupted. “I said
the very next person to break a window would get a spanking.”
He rose from the recliner and pulled
himself up to this full height. He then reached for the buckle of his
belt – Swoosh! – off it came with one firm tug. We were near
euphoria by this time. It remained to be seen if we could even remain
conscious long enough to see her punishment delivered.
“HERBERT, DON’T YOU DARE!!”
shouted Mama. Daddy broke into hysterical laughter, sank back into his
recliner and ordered us to go wash up for dinner. So much for the
justice system.
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