Gum and Thriftiness and Pronunciation and Honesty (Jeanne)

Eileen was a very thrifty gal. She bought CareFree sugarless gum and would willingly share it. A half piece at a time. Seriously! Since gum loses its flavor relatively quickly, she thought it was wasteful to take an entire piece, no matter how long you would chew it. So she would tear the piece in half and hand it out as though it were a special treat. Even Jenifer remembers this about her!

When her grandson Morgan was preschool age, he pronounced the word "Num." Grandma Eileen said, "Gum. G - g - g - g - gum. With a hard G. You say it." And Morgan said, "G - g - g - g - num!" It was hilarious! He wasn't doing it to be a stinker; he just had trouble with the word. But she kept trying!

When Jeanne was five-ish years old, Eileen said "No" at the grocery store to buying her a pack of gum for herself. Jeanne took one and put all five sticks in her mouth while on the car ride home. Since she was dumb, the wrappers were all there in the back seat. Eileen was so angry! She made Jeanne get the 35 cents out of her piggy bank, go back to the store, and apologize to the manager for stealing. (Plus pay for it.) The manager may have felt even worse than Jeanne, but a lesson was learned.

Comments

Emergency Contact (Jeanne)

This is a sad story. I'm not 100% what year it was (2011-2013?) but I had to fill out the same old paperwork for work. Every year, the same stuff! Phone number, address, blah blah blah. (I was super tempted to write "Nothing's changed.") But on the section where it asked for a secondary contact in case of emergency, I paused. And cried. Louie is always my first contact. But my mom had always been that second one, just in case. And it must have been the fall of 2011, because I remember the struggle I felt knowing she wouldn't have the mental acuity to take an emergency call on my behalf. The realization that her role in my life had changed and I needed to be strong for her . . . rather than me being able to lean on her . . . that was hard. I asked Morgan if I could put his name and number down in case of an emergency if they couldn't reach his dad. Of course, he said yes. I am incredibly blessed that I had my mom around for 48 years of my life and that ...

Earthquakes (Jeanne)

With the news of the earthquake that hit Morocco last Friday (Sept. 8, 2023), I was reminded of a conversation I had with my mom many years ago. We were talking about things that scared us. She said she was most frightened of earthquakes. That surprised me, but as we talked she shared about her time living in California in the 1950s. She said it was a terrible feeling to be going about her day and have things suddenly start shaking and rattling. She told me she never wanted to live in an earthquake zone again. I asked her if it was more frightening than tornadoes and she said absolutely. We talked about how we'd never experienced hurricanes or volcanoes. It was an interesting conversation that I just recently remembered. Actually, I think she may have been on the gulf coast during a hurricane after that conversation . . . but I wasn't there. That's a Louise story to tell!

Music! (Jeanne)

I've often said that I didn't grow up with much singing . . . but that's not entirely true. Recently, I started singing Alouette ( Canadian version ). It got me thinking about why that song was in my brain and what triggered me to start singing it out of the blue. I remembered back to when we were singing it in French class (8th grade?) and I was very familiar with the tune. I had not known, however, that it was about plucking a bird's feathers! And further, the verses have us plucking feathers from the different body parts INCLUDING THE BEAK! If you're curious but don't speak French, here are the lyrics in English. It was fun to learn about this song my dad had sung to me. Besides Alouette , we grew up singing Frère Jacques . I guess my dad was more into singing (and playing piano) than my mom was. I wish I had recorded him singing when I had the opportunity. I could probably add more to this entry (and perhaps I will later), but I need to work on more pr...

Eileen and Larry Somers

Search This Blog