My daughter, Louisa, is funny. Really, funny. She has a great sense of humor. And she is a good story teller. I told her I'd like to do a blog post featuring one of her stories. She gave me permission to write about her funny Mary-ism, but said if I did, I had to also include a link to her blog. Check it out!
My friend, Lisa, claims that I have more strange things happen to me than anyone else she knows. I assert that I can just take regular things and make them funny. Like this one, for instance, from my misspent youth.
One day, during my college years, I was walking along Gammon Road, just south of West Towne Mall, in Madison, WI. Just walking along. Gammon Road at that time, in that area, was at least two lanes in each direction. Maybe three. Busy. Loud traffic. Cars everywhere. A few pedestrians.
I felt something brush against my side, near where my purse was hanging. My first reaction was that perhaps some "bad-guy" was trying to steal my purse, and that in the noise of traffic I hadn't heard him approach.
So I turned suddenly to see who (or what) was back there. You know, that kind of frightened reflexive action a person might make if they feel like someone is following. I turned suddenly to see what it was. But then, just as suddenly, I felt something brush my other side! So I around I went the other way. But there! Again on the first side! Around I went again. This cycle repeated itself several times, until I was spinning crazily back and forth along the sidewalk.
Now remember that this is along a multi-laned city street during a busy time of day. Can you say, Tourette's syndrome? I'm sure that's what some passersby thought seeing my strange behavior.
After several of these startled spins, back and forth, around and around, each in response to some perceived threat on one side or another, I realized there was nothing dangerous or threatening present. It had been nothing but my purse, bumping and banging into me. As I swung around, so too would my purse. It would knock against one side and then another, depending upon the direction of my frightened spinning.
I was pretty embarrassed. Yeah.
But it makes a great story, doesn't it?
So, whether strange things really do happen to me, as Lisa would assert, or whether I just tell about mostly normal things in an entertaining way, I can't say. You will have to judge. But here's something I've discovered. My Louisa has this same penchant for strange stories.
Here's one she told me today.
Louisa was in her room, loading a video on her laptop. She had clicked to pause it, so that it could load while she did other things. She then proceeded to a different tab to play Lingo.
Play, play, play. Nothing unusual there.
Then suddenly, out of the blue, her computer spoke to her. In a slow and creepy, whispery sort of voice, "Come on."
Louisa started. "Whoa!" She quickly closed her Lingo tab, "Perhaps something goofy loaded with it."
So next Louisa, still waiting for her video to load, checked her e-mail on a Yahoo tab. Her freaked out Lingo tab was closed, ... so, ... no worries, right?
Until, once more, in that same spooky, raspy voice, she heard her computer speak to her again, "I got you now."
"Yikes! what's going on? I'm really freaked out here. Is someone creeping me somehow through my computer? How is he talking to me?" All these and more such thoughts raced through her anxious mind in that first moment of fear.
Louisa scanned her other tabs quickly. "What is this? What page is doing this? Is someone, somehow, stalking me?"
"Oh, my goodness, what a relief!"
There was an ad attached to the video Louisa was trying to load. So although the video was paused, the ad didn't pause. And the ad which was loading slowly, and in fits and starts, used a creepy, frightening stalker voice to speak raspy, spooky stalker words.
In the end, all was good. Louisa was safe. Her computer was in no way compromised. And she took away from the frightening adventure a great story to share with theMom. And from theMom, so on to all the world.
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