Welcome to the Weekly Guest Spotlight
Ciara BallintyneTonight’s guest is writer, Ciara Ballintyne. For more about Ciara, click on her photo to visit her website.
Mum has a wicked sense of humour. Dad maintains that’s not true – she just enjoys laughing at other people’s misfortune. If you actually look up ‘wicked’ in the dictionary you get five definitions. These two seemed relevant:
Evil by nature and in practice; or
Playfully malicious or mischievous:
So, Dad, any new thoughts on Mum’s sense of humour?
Despite having a wicked sense of humour, Mum has a soft spot for soft and furry creatures. Especially cats. And even mice her cats bring home.
So Mum’s cat, Mandu (ha ha) is out the back, tossing something 4 or 5 feet up in the air, catching it and then doing it again.
‘Oh, she’s got a mouse! Go rescue it.’
‘Why me?’
‘I’m not touching the mouse.’
So I go out to rescue the mouse. OK, OK, you got me, I felt sorry for it too. Don’t spread it around, all right. You’ll ruin my rep.
Cats don’t like it much when you take away their playthings and the playthings generally don’t appreciate you’re trying to rescue them. So while trying to separate the cat from the mouse, the mouse did a runner. Mice move fast, and you need to think fast to stay ahead of them, and maybe I didn’t do the thinking part so well, but I damn sure managed to stay in front of that mouse.
I put my foot in front of it, you see.
The leg of my pants fell over the mouse.
The mouse ran up my pants.
Yeah, like I said, not so much on the thinking….
The good news was the mouse ran up the inside seam of my pants and not my leg. The bad news was Mum stood inside doubled over with laughter shrieking ‘take your pants off where all the neighbours can see!’ and there was no one else home to help me.
I got the mouse out without needing to strip off in the backyard. I don’t recall what happened to it. I expect I didn’t care. The cat could have run off with the damn thing with my blessing.
But I did learn to be cautious of any requests from my Mum. Even if she wasn’t trying to suck me into anything, I sure knew she wouldn’t help me out if I got into trouble trying to help her out.
Hasn’t got a wicked sense of humour… my arse!
Thanks to Ciara for being a guest again this week. I think she and I have similar moms. I’m pretty sure mine would have gotten a huge kick out of seeing me shriek with a mouse in my pants. I’ll be sure to avoid that just in case.
Until the next time…I’ll be watching for mice in the yard!