We had a neighbor once (Pam, I'm sure you remember the Rawls' down the street 4 doors) who was convinced that my mother was a witch. Not a caldron-stirring, spell-casting witch..
Here's why:
We had another neighbor, on the other side next door on the corner, who lost her wedding ring one weekend. We happened to be away that weekend. When we returned, the lady of the house (I don't recall their names now, all I remember is they lived there before my best friend Lesley moved in when we were 5, and they had a boy whom we convinced to taste doggy doo one time.) told mother that she had lost her ring in the back yard and despite looking everywhere she had been, she could not find her ring.
Now this yard had 3 narrow sidewalks leading from the back door. One went to a covered patio. One went to the side door of the garage, and the last went to the gate leading to the driveway.
Mother told her to look halfway between the garage sidewalks and she would find her ring. The lady protested that she had already had all the kids down on their knees scouring the yard inch by inch. Mother finally convinced her to look again, and sure enough, the ring was exactly where Mother said it would be.
When word got around about this, the neighbor down the street, Mrs. Rawls, was convinced that Mother was psychic at best, and most probably the neighborhood expert on bat wings at worst. So much so, that when Mrs Rawls would take her walk in the afternoon, she would cross the street when she reached our house, walk ONE house, then cross back to finish her trek around the block.
Mother knew that the lady and her husband had been arguing over the past few days. She also knew that the lady was a bit of a drama queen, and Mother could imagine her standing at the back door, throwing her rings in the midst of a hissy fit. The rest was just simple mathematics. Mother, being the intelligent woman that she was, figured the trajectory of the toss and VOILA!...there was the ring.
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This next story about Mother's "powers" is a little harder to explain. It's the one that's always left me bewildered.
Daddy was a long distance truck driver for a lot of the years that we kids were growing up. It was nothing for him to be gone for days at a time.First he drove an auto transport, but later on he drove chemicals in an 18 wheel tanker truck. Some were pretty nasty, like carbolic acid. And this was back in the days before HazMat suits and special routes.
One night, when Daddy was on a trip, Mother awoke with a start in the middle of the night. She heard him call her name. Assuming he couldn't find his key, she went to the front door to let him in. He wasn't there. So she went to the back door. Never mind that the back door was too far away for her to hear him call out. By this time she was awake enough to look in the driveway. No car. He wasn't home, and wasn't due home until the next day.
When Daddy arrived home the next evening, Mother asked him, "What was going on this morning about 1 o'clock?"
She said Daddy turned white as a sheet and asked, "How did you know?"
She told him she heard him calling her name, but he wasn't there.
It seems that at the exact time that Mother heard him call out to her, he had been driving on a mountain road...narrow...steep drop-off....no barriers. Something with his truck didn't feel right. So he pulled over when it was wide enough, and walked back to look at the spot. That's when he saw the tracks of his wheels. 2 on the inside...1 on the outside. The other wheel had been hanging off into thin air.
(Insert Twilight Zone music here)
My question is this....did she tell me this story because it really happened, or did she make it up (she was a gifted writer) so that I would believe that Mother was know-all-see-all and therefore I could not get away with any teenage crap, so don't even try.
What do you think?
My vote: Mother told it as it happened. I remember both incidents. She used plain ole common sense and her good brain to figure out where to find Mrs. Main's ring. The truck thing was more of a clairvoyant experience. It happened before you were old enough to need an incentive to behave. Mother did indeed have a big dose of ESP or whatever you want to call it. Now see if you can devine which sibling contributed this opinion!
ReplyDeleteLemme seeeee...Eenie Meenie, Chili Beanie...the spirits are about to speak!!!
ReplyDeleteIt's....my.....SISTER!!!
(It has to be my sister, my brother still isn't speaking to me!)
Mother's sixth sense, or whatever it was, was respected in our family-especially by our dad. Once we were planning a vacation to the Big Bend area of West Texas when Mother got one of her radar blips. She had this feeling of dread about the trip and was convinced that we shouldn't go there. So Daddy agreed to a change of plans. I've wondered what would have happened if we had gone to the Big Bend, but I'm sure glad we didn't test Mother's powers.
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