Kleenex Boxes

My mother is the youngest of 5 children. More importantly, she is the only girl of the family. I know I have mentioned in the past that my uncles have been known to tease me. I can safely assume that once I arrived in the picture, I may have taken my mother’s place of honor. I can also assume that she probably got worse than I ever dreamed of. Something tells me, though, that it was just a matter of time before she was able to hold her own.

Back when we lived in Carbondale (and shortly before we had children), my mom drove the 6 hours to spend a few days with us. Bonehead and I used to love these visits from our mothers because it usually meant a trip to the grocery store. Free groceries to supplement a college budget are always an extremely welcomed item.

On this particular visit, my mother and I went to the local Wal-Mart to do some shopping. She had gone her own way for a few minutes leaving me to peruse the aisles at will, choosing the items I thought we could make use of. As I neared the end of an aisle, on the right hand side, I saw boxes of tissues. We needed tissues.

Now, I have noticed a pattern in all of the grocery stores I have visited in the past 15 or so years. At one point or another during my excursion there is always someone I have to wait for to make a decision. Usually, from the time they take, you’d think the decision was a matter of life or death. “Oh, oh, oh. Do I get the 2% cheese or the full fat? What would the kids actually eat? Would the hubby notice if I slipped 2% into his diet? Oh, oh, oh.”

Sometimes that decision maker is me, sometimes it is not.

On this day, it just so happened the decision maker was someone else. And usually, I am more than patient. But for some reason I can not quite explain, that day I wasn’t. As I saw her bent over the Kleenexes, I decided I could sneak up above her and grab the box I wanted real quickly. In and out, and she’d never know I was there.

Except for the fact that I dropped the box on her head. I immediately wanted to crawl into a hole and blend in with the scenery. Oh, how I wished I could have been anywhere but there- I would have preferred weeding the cracks in sidewalks with a butter knife to standing in that store at that moment. I immediately began to apologize profusely. “Oh, I am SO SORRY.”

It was that moment I noticed my mom approaching us. My own sweet , loving, grocery providing mother looked at me, looked at the lady, assessed the situation, and said, “No, she’s not. I saw her, she did it on purpose.”

I turned about 23 individual shades of red, and that’s all I remember. I think I blacked out.

And that is another one of my very many most embarrassing moments.