Mums and Dads...and Grandparents!
I was overwhelmed with the number of hits on my last post, I just hope it was interesting for you!
I never really know what to write about, things just pop into my mind, other times I have an idea rolling around for ages and gradually content comes to mind. It's amazing how one might never remember certain things from the past, but as soon as the thought processes are engaged, more and more related events just appear out of the blue.
I do this activity with my kids at school. I ask them to slowly try and remember how they got to school that morning. Often they say that they 'saw nothing', but when probed with prompts, they will often recall things that they might otherwise have completely forgotten.
eg Who else was in the street?
Did you see any animals?
What music was playing in the car?
What were you talking about?
Did you see anyone you knew?
Did you think about the weather when you looked at the sky?
etc.
Anyway, I digress from the point of this post!!
Those who know me well would be aware that Jenny and I became Grandparents for the first time about 15 months ago. We also became parents 30 years ago, so I was thinking about what things will our own kids remember about us as they grew up, and what will our Grandkids remember too ?
I'm sure you can all rattle off things that your own parents would say or do, and they are things that at the time you may have been too scared to make fun of, but can now look back and have a good old laugh about them.
I suppose we could include teachers here as well, but then we could also start including people from all walks of life.
Isn't it a Pandora's box !!!
There are things that I remember about my parents, and I can now acknowledge things that our boys say about Jen and myself that make me laugh and cringe at the same time. We can't change what has happened, but we can look back and have a little giggle.
My Parents
My dear parents, Kevin and Helen both passed away many years ago, but left us with a lifetime of laughs.
I can actually remember things that my brothers and I would do to my dad, that our sons have sort of done to me. How can I be mad at them for doing that?
In no particular chronological order, some of the things we often reminisce about...
Dad's hearing aids.
In his later years, Dad got hearing aids, as many people do as they get older. At first he was having difficulty getting adjusted to them, and didn't we take advantage of that !!
We'd be sitting in the lounge watching tv or just chatting, and my brothers and I would gradually start talking louder and louder, but maintaining the expression that we were just talking at our usual volume.
We'd glance over at Dad and see him getting frustrated at the noise level, but he wouldn't say a thing, thinking it was the hearing aids playing up. He'd be banging them and muttering and swearing under his breath.."Bloody things...these are useless...what's wrong with these...etc"
Then we would do the opposite, and talk really softly, and get the same response from Dad. He'd then turn the volume up, which only made us go back to our loud voices again!!!
Then we would turn it up another notch and talk in our normal voices, but mute our voices every so often but still mouth the words. This produced the effect like the one you get when a power lead is loose and the sound keeps cutting in and out.
Dad was too proud to fess up and say he was having trouble with his hearing aids, so we just kept doing this from time to time for our own entertainment!!
What a bunch of sadists!!
The irony of this however, is that I now have hearing aids, and can understand what we put Dad through !!
Our boys and my wife joke that they would be able to chat about things in the house knowing full well that I'd be missing out on the whole discussions, and then having a laugh when I ask about things that had already been spoken about.
I only deserve to receive what I had already given out. Sorry Dad !!!
"Chuck !!"
For whatever reason, Mum hated the word "Chuck". We think it was probably because it had connotations with vomiting, as it is also a slang word for vomiting here in Australia.
It wouldn't matter even if we used it in the context of throwing a ball, as in "Chuck the ball to me".
Whenever we said it she would castigate us and tell us to use another word, or even give us the word to use instead.
Well, wasn't this a red rag to a bull !!
At every opportunity we would look for ways to use the word "Chuck" where it could not be substituted.
For example, we'd initiate discussions about music, and inevitably we'd talk about great musicians, and who was one of the early greats but Chuck Berry !
Immediately Mum would raise her eyebrows in exasperation, and our response would be an overly innocent "What? That's his name. You can't call him Throw Berry or Toss Berry"
All the while acting overly innocent and secretly lauding our own childish behaviour!
Then it became a challenge to see how many ways we could include "chuck" into our conversations, and then act offended when Mum would pick us up on using the word.
"Hey Mum, are you using CHUCK steak in the stew tonight?" 🤣
"Hey boys, I'm going to watch a movie. Fancy a CHUCK Norris one?" 😂
"Did you see that documentary about the WoodCHUCK in the USA ?"🤣
It just became a relentless game. Mum knew we were taking advantage of the fact she hated the word, and on some occasions she brought out 'Charlie', the wooden spoon and would chase us around the kitchen with it until we shut up. Great fun.
Yabbies.
A favourite activity on hot summer days was to go and catch yabbies, or go yabbying.
Overseas readers, you might have different names for them, but here they are basically small freshwater crayfish, only smaller.
This is a good sized one
We also use them as bait for fishing, but not ones that are this big.
So what is this anecdote about?
The yabbying expeditions involved getting lengths of string about a metre or more in length and tie bits of meat on the end. The other end is tied to a stick and placed upright in the mud at the edge of the dam.
The dams are the water supply in the paddocks for sheep and cattle, and are usually this muddy colour.
Well, in addition to the meat and strings, we'd often take a well stocked esky with us and have a few beers while on the job.
On this particular day, Dad decided to come with us. We thought this might cramp our style a bit, but relented and let him tag along.
Everything was going well and we caught heaps.
As we were about to leave, one of us ( I forget who came up with the idea, maybe we all just came up with it together!) decided to hide a yabby ( the biggest one we had) on top of the sun visor in the front seat. This meant ensuring that Dad sat in the front seat, something he didn't want to do as he was content sitting in the back and having a beer on the trip home. However, we insisted.
So off we go, and for the life of us, he wouldn't pull the sun visor down. In the end, someone else in the car yelled out "Hey Dad, can you pull that visor down, the sun is too bright here in the back".
"No worries" he says, and next second this huge yabby drops down and lands in his lap.
You would have thought that someone had just lobbed a live hand grenade at him! His beer went everywhere, he was jumping up and down and screaming, and all the while we were rolling around laughing. Whoever was driving also had to stop the car as he was laughing too hard as well.
Eventually he got himself back together and dispatched the yabby to the bucket.
Dad was very silent for the rest of the trip home, either he was thinking about what damage those claws could have done to his nether regions, or he was silently plotting his revenge !!
One of the funniest things I have seen 😂
A tradition in our family home, like many others, was the Sunday roast.
Mum was an expert at this, and I must say at this point that we were a large family of 5 boys and 3 girls.
As we got older, we started to bring our partners home, so you could imagine there were quite a few people to feed on a Sunday if we were all home.
In what resembled an industrial kitchen at times, there would be pots and pans and trays in and on top of the oven ( a wood stove we had) and all sorts of meat and veges cooking away.
The smells would inevitably draw everyone to the kitchen and family members would be tempted to pick at the food before it was ready to be dished. With so many boys, they were the main culprits, and Mum was forever trying to kick us out of the kitchen.
When it was finally ready we would hear Mum call out "Boys, come and get it".
Which we would happily do ! 5 minutes later we are in and out of the kitchen and into our meals. Then Mum and the girls would grab theirs, and there was always more than enough to go around.
After a few visits, my now wife asked my Mum why she always called the boys first to get their meal.
"Oh that's easy " laughed my Mum, it just gets rid of them more quickly!!
Mum and the girls would then leisurely get their meals and sit together and have a great old chat and a drink while having their lunch, while the boys were usually just shovelling theirs down.
I can hear you thinking "Why didn't you all eat together?". Well, that was because it was a very small house and there just wasn't the room for us all to sit together. But that didn't stop conversations spreading from room to room, and people yelling out to each other.
Which only then prompted some more mayhem antagonising Dad with his hearing aids !! 😤
I could just go on and on with similar stories...
Us as Parents
Just as we did these things to our parents, and remember things particular to each of them, it would be naive of me to think that our 3 boys don't think the same about Jen and myself.
Knowing Sam, Will and Lachie as I do, I'd be sure that they have their own private little gags about their parents !
I've already mentioned about my own hearing aids, and the laughs they all have when I miss the bleeding obvious !! I'll just have to wait and see if they do the same things, or even more creative things that we once did to my dad.
I've since discovered, sort of to my own embarrassment, the giggles they have had to suppress on the occasions I have been in hospital and they have come to visit me.
Usually they have visited soon after one of my surgeries (I have had many over the years to my knees, ankle, shoulder, legs to name a few. All self inflicted due to sport)
On most visits, I have still been under the effects of the general anaesthetic and have been more dopey than I usually am. Jen has often had to word them up beforehand that I'll probably be incoherent to some extent, and that they'll just have to act like everything is normal.
It was only later on that they'd have a laugh with me, telling me all the stupid things I'd be saying, or repeating things that I may have said only a few minutes earlier.
I can remember during some of these visits getting a little angry when I was telling them things, and noticing that they were smirking a bit as I did so. Little did I know I'd probably told them the same thing already. Two to three times in fact !! 😖
We laugh about it now, but at the time they weren't feeling that they could tell me I was fluffing about. Sorry boys !!
We all know how frustrating it is to be kept waiting on the phone when ringing a company or department to pay bills, request refunds, make a complaint etc. My wife is not one to suffer fools, and is very forthright when sticking to her guns when dealing with these type of phone calls.
For example, when trying to cancel a subscription to a certain streaming service, the person on the other end was doing everything to make her take on a new subscription, when she was adamant she was cancelling it. After being put on hold numerous times her patience was wearing thin, and the person she was talking to was very calmly and politely informed that Jen was far from happy.
The boys were overhearing this conversation, and when she got off the phone she was told "Wow Mum, Zero to bitch in 10 seconds!!"
This was far from the case, but it stuck and the boys have never let her forget it, and it has become a familiar catch cry in the house, one that they will probably tell their kids.
The boys often laugh at my cooking exploits.
I'm a huge pasta fan and eat it at every opportunity.
On the nights when it is 'scrap night' , or just cook for yourself, I'll always make a pasta dish
However, never is a recipe considered!!
The pantry door is flung open, and whatever grabs my fancy at that time gets thrown in the pan with the pasta. Some of these foods may never have been used together in the history of culinary exploration, and may well never again, but I showed the boys what I was prepared to do.
They were never shared of course, because everyone in the family was either too scared, wary or sensible to try them !!
When they'd ask what I was cooking, it was always 'Pasta Surprise', and I'm sure that long after I'm gone they might still talk about dad and his Pasta Surprise meals.
Us as Grandparents
We are novices at this Grandparent gig, and learning as we go.
What must our little Henry be thinking as his parents regularly Facetime us with him?
They live in Qld, so we haven't had the joy of being with him, but the regularity of the calls mean that we feel we have not missed a thing.
Both of us have our own special noises and sounds that we make, and it could be the case that Henry will grow up associating each of us with the way we speak to him over the phone.
If we tried to do each other's noises and sounds, or tone of voice, it just wouldn't sound right or feel right. For him and us.
And as we grow older, and so do our sons, there is more chance of more grandchildren, and more silliness and eccentricities from his Grandparents.
I just hope there are some things they will remember us fondly for rather than some of the embarrassing things I've subjected our boys to 🤭
Well Readers,
This post is all about MY family, but I hope it starts a conversation in YOUR family.
Perhaps you might talk about different things that family members say and do and have a good old belly laugh.
Or maybe you might raise something that others were unaware of?
Or there could be things you won't want to mention at all !!!
Either way, it's just a good way to remember your family and appreciate the things that make them special.
Until my next post,
Cheers 😁
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