Jesus, You know I somewhat envy families who stand still long enough for lovely, we’re-together holiday photos. But OMG, You know I wouldn’t trade our sweet, rowdy Thanksgiving for anything!
Jesus, thank You for a Ranger-roaring good time with my big brother, zooming around the Indiana hills like teenagers. For a brother-sister tour of his Eden-like garden. And OMG, thank You for his hospitable, patient wife who put up with a couple of adolescents in her home.
Once upon a time, a grandma pondered how to bond with her teen grandchildren. Neither she nor Grandpa were into Super Smash Bros.™ or Korean rap groups.
Then Grandma envisioned a blue-sky, summer day, when they would pick strawberries together. Afterward, she and Grandpa would reward their darlings with lunch out. Then Grandma would bake the perfect strawberry pie for dessert. The grateful grandchildren would visit every week forever.
Driving to their home on the blue-sky day, Grandpa said, “You think they’re awake?”
“Of course,” said Grandma. Privately, she wondered how many times they’d hit snooze.
Whoa! Their granddaughter immediately opened the door. Her brothers, also fully dressed, stood behind her. All were silent, eyes shut.
On the way, Grandpa whispered, “Is this the Morning of the Living Dead?”
In the enormous Yuppie U-Pick patch, berries looked as if they had been polished. Clumps of pickers in designer clothing dotted the pristine landscape.
A lifelong addiction to fresh fruit blinded Grandma to prices. Un-bedazzled Grandpa, however, emphasized picking limited amounts — unless they wanted to spend the grandkids’ college fund.
To the grandparents’ delight, the Living Dead picked like the hardworking kids they were. Despite steamy heat, boxes filled quickly. They talked and smiled. When Grandma was funny, they chuckled.
Eventually, though, Grandma heard subtle hints like: “Um, this box is full,” and “I’ve shriveled into jerky.”
Hadn’t they ever heard of strawberry fields forever?
Nevertheless, if she wanted a happy-ever-after, they’d have to quit.
Grandma helped organize the exit: “Kids, you carry the 70 pounds of strawberries. I’ll carry your water bottles.”
However, she forgot hers and searched the patch, “I think it was this row — the one with the strawberries.” Meanwhile, the teens suffered sunburn, and Grandpa forked over their college fund.
The reward lunch took place at a restaurant run by sloths.
Weary Grandma cheated by buying store-bought crusts, something no respectable storybook grandma would do. She found an easy recipe on whats-an-oven.com.
The pie’s juices overflowed, and clouds of smoke billowed throughout the house. Would the neighbors call the fire department?
Having thrown open windows to suck in oxygen, everyone sat down to soupy pie with crust hard as a sidewalk. Not a storybook ending.
Grandpa whispered, “Oh, well. If they visited every week, we’d have to clean the house and be good role models.”
Before they left, though, Grandma and Grandpa received over-the-top hugs.
Who could wish for a sweeter happy-ever-after than that?
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Have your storybook plans ever gone up in smoke?
Even before spring, desperate parents, after excessive winter togetherness, pay their teens to cruise. Their alien music blares through wide-open windows, loud enough for Martian counterparts to keep the beat.
But we did it, too, right? Although when I cruised, gas cost 30.9 cents per gallon.
In my hometown, puberty’s onset compelled us to cruise Jerry’s Drive-In. We parked outside, as only squares ate inside. My girlfriends and I feared if we darkened the restaurant’s door, Percy Faith and his orchestra (Jerry’s Muzak®) would scar us for life.
My cruel parents once dragged me inside and made me sit by the window. I slid down into the booth and covered my head with a menu. Finally, I escaped to the restroom, but Mom followed.
She even talked to me. “Are you sick?”
Didn’t she know a Popular Person might be concealed in a stall, listening?
Afterward, on Saturday nights, I retreated to the second-coolest A&W — which tied with Jerry’s if your steady worked there. Fortunately, I was dating a cook. Sometimes, he came outside in all his A&W glory (apron, little folded hat) to wow me and my friends.
When we split, though, my A&W status plummeted. I returned to Jerry’s.
I’d noticed a tall, shy guy in my biology class, so my friend, Celia, and I officially added his house to weekend cruises. I’d perfected my slink-down technique: I could ride on the car’s floor an entire evening, yet record my targets like a satellite camera. Golf-green grass surrounded my guy’s house. Symmetrical evergreens. It was located near the A&W, so we also could zoom past and spy on my ex.
Once, when I drove past my crush’s house in my parents’ uncool station wagon, Celia hung out the window and screamed, “Steeeeeevie, baby, we looooove you!”
I peeled out, chastising Celia for endangering my fragile status with my new Numero Uno and his parents, who probably had been waxing their driveway.
However, no damage was done to my relationship with the sweet guy who made biology lab fruit flies so fascinating. Soon, he and I did a little cruising too.
“Want to go to the A&W?” my future husband asked as we pulled out of his driveway.
“I’d love it.”
And I did.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Where did you cruise as a teen?
O Lord, You know that as a tall middle-schooler, I sneaked Mom’s coffee, trying to stunt my growth. Gag! It tasted awful! Yet decades later, a steaming mug of coffee blesses my day. OMG, maybe Your gifts to us are often an acquired taste?
Our children are grown, and their offspring have not yet reached their teens—a comfortable stage for all involved.
But that will change the day their oldest turns 16.
How can I forget that era? Our teens learned to drive. My husband and I learned to pray.
Our kids were responsible. So why did the sight of a driver’s education car squeeze my stomach even more than the course fees?
Some blame rests on Mr. Doom, my long-ago driver education teacher. His first words: “I don’t like women drivers.”
Among four 16-year-olds, we could not scrape up a single Y chromosome. If we girls took driver’s ed today, we could sue him for sexual harassment and his hideous neckties.
Instead, we gulped meekly and tried our best to kill him.
My friend Linda eclipsed us all by wrecking the department’s new 1970 Cutlass (odometer reading: 11 miles).
I attempted to console her: “You did what he said.”
How could Linda know that when Mr. Doom ordered, “Pull over,” he meant after we passed the telephone pole?
His inspirational thought for the day: “You’re all going to die within 10 years.”
But I survived. I even lived to list my minivan as my legal address during our children’s school years.
But me, their unofficial driving instructor? It was like Homer Simpson giving sensitivity lessons.
I did discover excellent practice sites. The first was our church parking lot. I felt 
closer to God there.
I found our second driving course at the cemetery, where most of the people were already dead.
Such parental dedication contributed to eventual success: all our children obtained drivers’ licenses. No longer did I drag out of bed to retrieve a teen worker at midnight. Nor did I risk mugging as I dozed in a dark parking lot, awaiting the end of a youth lock-in.
Instead, we parents languished at home, monitoring car rates on the Insurance Channel.
We were proud of our children’s safe driving records, though, crediting superior instruction, constant practice and boring cars. When our grandchildren turn 16, Steve and I will highly recommend the latter as an efficient means of ruining their fun.
Their parents will recall our shopping for their first cars. Chunky and colorless, the perfect choice sat, an empty space on either side (the other cars didn’t want to hang around it). The car had visited only the grocery, library and church with its aged owner. It had forgotten how to drive above 55.
Yes, sirree, their dad and I had found the car. Teens couldn’t sin in that car if they had to.
Could they?
If they did, they’re still not telling.
How about your first car? Anything you’re not telling your folks, either?
“How do I find a job?” our eldest inquired. Then 16, she needed to support her shoe habit.
Nostalgia washed over me. My father helped me get my first job at a Howard Johnson’s restaurant. Because the boss knew Dad — a charming southern gentleman in work coveralls — he hired me, sight unseen.
No wonder you don’t see many Howard Johnson’s restaurants anymore.
I learned more about human nature there than if I’d pursued a Ph.D. in psychology.
I also waitressed one summer in Klamath Falls, Oregon. The town’s welcoming sign read, “Kill your wife in Klamath Falls, the Murder Capital of the World.”
My mother helped me get this job — were my parents trying to tell me something?
I worked night shift, serving inebriated cowboys who wore the menus and pulled me onto their laps. Thank goodness for the 4:30 a.m. arrival of gentlemanly garbage guys!
I switched to janitorial work, often a solo job. Cleaning men’s rooms, I, a college music student, sang loud, high operatic scales. Few guys attempted to use the facilities with Madame Butterfly on the premises. My brother and I tidied lawyers’ offices whose open bottles of whiskey smelled like floor stripper. We also cleaned Klamath County’s 86 phone booths. We ate greasy hamburgers, laughed, sang and spent our best time together.
Then I worked at a nursing home, caring for Alex, an elderly schizophrenic with light-bulb eyes. I also met gentle 90-year-old Minnie, who daily fried imaginary chicken for imaginary threshers, and Freddie, once a dapper young stagecoach driver. I often ducked John, who thought I was an island girl during World War II.
Gradually, I became accustomed to Stan’s Bath Ceremony. Each line of his accompanying song began with a string of profanity in Bohemian, followed by:
“Take off da shoes. Dirrty, loussy, rrrotten, no-good VOOMAN!” He removed his shoes.
“Take off da socks. Dirrty, loussy, rrrotten, no-good VOOMAN!” He removed his socks.
“Take off da shirt. Dirrty, loussy, rrrotten, no-good VOOMAN!” He removed his shirt.
“AAAAAHHHHH!” This prelude to verse two was accompanied by a swing of his fist through the air. Once he donned a robe, though, Stan followed me docilely to the shower room.
My first permanent office job didn’t involve serving eggs to menu wearers or bathing Bohemians. Finally, I had arrived.
Within ten minutes I discovered summer jobs were only warm-ups for the real world. …
My daughter snare-drummed her fingers, bringing me out of my reverie. She repeated, as if I were mind-impaired: “Mom, how do you get a summer job?”
“Don’t worry, honey,” I assured her in my most motherly tone.
“I’ll help you find one.”
What was your most memorable summer job?