Peggy

Did you ever say something that you wanted to retract as soon as it left your mouth? I have noticed it happening a lot with the Presidential aspirants this year. It happens a lot to me and my wife blames it on ADD – see the squirrel? Sorry, an in-house joke.

My oldest sister got married when I was 6 years old and she said that she gave me a brother-in-law as a birthday present. I really wanted a pony but I had to make do with what I got. Homer was from a large family and his brothers and sisters often came to visit. I remember one visit during the early summer when I was probably 10 or 11.

We always had a large garden with plenty of potatoes, corn, beans, cabbage, etc. I remember Homer’s brother and his wife, Peggy, visiting and walking down the rows of our garden. The big Beefeater tomatoes were still green but we were picking and eating Cherry tomatoes which we called Tommy Toes. Every once in a while we’d encounter one of those big green, ugly tobacco caterpillars and Peggy would act squeamish and say something like, “Get that awful thing away.” I can still see her turning up her nose, shivering, and pulling away every time I put one on a stick and showed it to her. It didn’t take much of a snarl to accentuate Peggy’s buck teeth and large overbite. Her entertaining comical expression was sufficient incentive to motivate my exploration of the rows in front of her.

In one of those utterances that you want to take back immediately I whispered, “Did you see a snake?” In my defense I did not say that there was a snake. I only asked the question and did not make the assertion that there was one. I really don’t think that Peggy appreciated the subtlety of my remarks because she fainted dead away. I don’t mean that she put her hand to her forehead and said catch me. I mean that she went limp as a dishrag – pants-wetting fainted dead away.

My sister and Peggy’s husband immediately went to her aid. They were not able to keep her from squashing that nice Big Boy tomato plant and making a pretty messy stain on her slacks. She regained her consciousness but not her composure and stumbled out of the garden. The four of them rounded the corner of the barn and were out of sight when the giggles that I had been suppressing finally erupted. A good hearty belly laugh is good for the soul but after a while those pangs of regret begin to set in.

There are some things that you say that you’d like to take back. However, there is a timing element to when you take them back. My whisper about seeing a snake is something I wish I hadn’t said; but I didn’t wish that I hadn’t said it until after I stopped laughing.