Spring is here and with it the amazing realities that unfold for a youngster.  I was one once, just at that age when I was constantly testing my parents.  Listening was not a priority, “In one ear and…”  Responsibility was a word too long to spell!

Spring Shenanigans

Mom was pissed. I’d heard the word at school, but wasn’t exactly sure what it meant.  I thought I’d put it to the test, “Mom, why are you so pissed?”

That made her even more pissed.  I guess my growing grasp of vocabulary was better than I thought.  No school that day, there was a teachers’ conference or some other excuse. I had a whole morning and afternoon to amuse myself.

Mom was entertaining her bridge group in a few hours – two tables.  It was 1943, and most of the men were away – either fighting or supporting the war.

I was underfoot. Mother was busy with the preparations.  “George, I told you to go out and play.”

My best friend, Tim, came by.  We decided to go to a softball game down the block – in those days there were still empty lots – and then finish the afternoon off with some fishing.

We rode our bikes out to the bait shop, where I used up my hard-earned allowance to buy six bloodworms.

We stopped home.  Tim waited outside, while I ran into the kitchen and placed the damp cardboard box holding the worms on the top shelf of the ice-box to stay fresh – the shelf, it turns out, just above the tossed green salad my mother was serving for lunch.

The ladies began to arrive, one by one, ready to begin the competition.  They drank Old Fashions and everyone smoked. They would eat in another hour or so.  The routine seldom varied.

Mother shooed me back outside again, and Tim and I took off for the game with our bats and mitts propped on our handlebars.

After a few innings, Tim and I biked back to the house to pick up our rods and reels.  Just as I arrived at the kitchen door, I heard one of the ladies scream, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”  The wire-frame glasses slid off her nose.

“Is that you, George?” my mother bellowed.  “Get in here.  Now, look what you’ve done!”

I could see the prissy neighbor holding out her fork, upon which balanced a piece of bib lettuce, a cube of tomato and, wiggling frantically at the end, a five-inch long bloodworm impaled on a tong.

The wet cardboard box had fallen apart in the fridge, and all six of the worms had found their way out and promptly dropped into mother’s salad, sliding underneath the bib lettuce leaves to the bottom of the bowl.  Yick, no wonder the nasty neighbor had erupted!

Mother turned beet red, the veins in her temple looking like lines on a relief map.

I was immediately put into the equivalent of a fisherman’s “Davey Jones’ Locker” – banished to my bedroom for the rest of the day.  Tim was dispatched home.

All I could do was wait, my vulgar verbal outburst that morning overshadowed by the disaster that had resulted from the wandering worms.  I had been warned before about using the ice-box.  Dad was due home anytime. I hoped the train would be late – very, very late.

He was working long hours in the city for British Intelligence and was usually dead-tired when he got home at night.  He finally arrived.  I was still in my room.  If I had any remaining questions about what “Pissed!” meant, they were erased that night.

— George S.K. Rider 😉