MOM’S FINE BUT I’M LOSING IT!

The other night while sleeping, the phone rang and TLW (The Little Woman) answered it. We keep a phone next to the bed for just such occasions. Being how TLW likes to talk at any time and I’m shy, it is on her side. This is good!

Answering the phone she waited for a reply to her rather eloquent: “Hullowwwww?”

Who ever the late night or early morning caller was decided they had the wrong number and didn’t bother to answer, just hung up.

The next morning I get a call from my older sister Tessie (much older) and she voices a concern about Mom. Mom is doing very well but does have a pain for over a year in her lower back and she just told us about it recently within the last few months! The doctors can’t figure it out and I certainly can’t, my older sister Tessie (much older) fears that it is her only kidney she has since her cancer operation a while back. Mom said she is only comfortable when she is lying down on her couch or in bed. Being a good son, I decide to give her a call.

I call and her phone has a busy signal going so I think one of the sibs is talking to her. I try a half hour later and still a busy signal. Once again about 20 minutes later a busy signal, so I decide to call her cell phone. Now Mom has her cell phone out on an end table in her den, amid her statues of Jesus, Mary, and St. Anthony. Being I am her son she got the St. Anthony statue at a garage sale and he is the patron saint of lost causes. So you see the connection: St. Anthony, lost causes and me. No one is picking up her cell phone. No Henry her boy toy, no aids, no nuthin.

Being a keen observer of situations I decide that something is wrong and jump into my chariot and over the river and through the snow to Grandmother’s house I go! I get there and her boy toy’s car is not in the driveway. This causes me to take pause. I guess a cause for pause kind of situation. So what do I do? I get out of the car and ring the doorbell. (Come on, you should have known that!) No answer! I try again, and guess what? Still no answer! (I’m glad you are able to follow this so well!) Fear strikes and I decide I will go to the local hospital and enquire if she has been admitted. The young lady behind the computer looks it up and says: “Room 209” I think: “AHA!” Then the young lady, a little older now says: “Oops! That was in December, no she’s not here.” I explain my dilemma and she suggest I call the police and have them knock the door down! I think about it and say very intelligently: “Nah, she’d kill me!”

“But she could be on floor!”

“And?”

“She could be dead!”

“She’d still kill me for messing up her living room.”

Not knowing what I will do, I decide to call TLW at work. She suggest I go back to the house and wait for Boy Toy to show up, maybe he went out shopping for her and Mom who doesn’t hear too well maybe asleep. Reluctantly I agree and wait in the driveway for about a half hour. All her neighbors are looking over at me and wondering why I am sitting in my car in the driveway. My phone comes alive, (Probably the only thong on me that is) and it is TLW once again checking in. As we are talking, who shows up but Boy Toy, with bags of shopping and a newspaper. We enter the house and Mom is sound asleep on her couch resting her back.

Once again, TLW’s suggestion was correct. But like she says: “Joe, you are NOT ordinary, you are EXTRA ordinary! I wish she would run those two words together.