Below is the recounting of the Lucille Ball Moment I told in my book Growing Old: One Lucille Ball Moment at a Time by my fifteen-year old daughter who just happened to fall victim to my issues that day.
When she told me that she had to write an essay for school and told this story I had to read it. She gives a very accurate description of her Mama and by the time she said I told her we were strong and independent women, I was howling and bawling with laughter.
If you've read my book, you'll love the other side of this story. Having me for a mom should come with hazard pay. I sure do love these kids of mine!
****My Daughter's Language Arts Essay***
It was my oldest sister's birthday. She was turning 30 years old that day. She lives in Dallas, Texas so we don't see her very often, and if we do it is only for a couple of days at the most. So we wanted to throw her a surprise birthday party and invite her old friends from Middle School, High School, and even College that she had not seen in forever! We invited friends from Mexico, New Mexico, California, South Dakota, Texas, Arizona, and Tennessee, even some family and family friends.
My sister had no idea all this was going to happen, we told my dad and all of my other siblings to keep her distracted the whole day like going shopping, going to the movies, going on a walk in the park, and visiting all the old places she used to love going to in her home town Skiatook, OK. She went to her high school to visit her old teachers she loved and her coaches that she still adores, and kept in touch with over the years. She visits Coach Dean and his wife every once in a while when she comes to visit, they are very close family friends that we all love.
While they were keeping her busy, me and my mom thought it was a good idea to have a pinata like me and all my siblings have sometimes had since the age of 7. We went to Walmart for the pinata, food, drinks, party decorations, and stuff to put inside the pinata. Since she is an adult we thought it would be fun to put “adult” stuff in there like chapstick, bandaids, gift cards, hand sanitizer, hand cream, little medicine containers, package gum, phone chargers, tiny things of adult beverages, pens, markers etc, so we had to get quite a big pinata. After we got all the stuff that was going to go inside the pinata we went to choose which pinata we wanted…we had no idea what was about to happen.
At first, we were looking at the ones on the bottom shelves, we found a few we liked but we wanted this day to be perfect so we put them in the ‘maybe pile.’ We kept looking and then my mom gasped so loud I thought there was something bad that was going to happen. The first thing that came to my mind was that there was a snake or some kind of insect or reptile, I got scared and said “What is it, what happened!” She says “I FOUND IT I FOUND THE PERFECT ONE! THIS IS IT!”
I was so happy because we were in Walmart for over three hours. But something you should know about my mom is that she is a very picky person when it comes to things like this. Once she sets her mind to something there is no changing it no matter what it is or how bad it is. The pinata that she found was just the “PERFECT” one but it was on the very top shelf. Me and my mom are both really short, so since we can’t reach it she thought it was a good idea for me to stand on the cart and get on her shoulders and grab the pinata.
As soon as I heard this plan of hers I knew this was not going to go as well as she was explaining it. I got on the cart and balanced myself on the shelf with my hand and was praying to God that this would happen without a disaster. But as soon as I put my first leg over her shoulder I got really dizzy and told my mom to just call an employee for help but she said “no, we got this we are strong and independent women” so I threw my other leg up there but I lost all the balance I had. My mom tried to help me by grabbing my leg and but that just made it worse because she was moving one way and I was moving the other.
I was knocking things down off the shelf and all you can hear is me screaming “this is all your fault,” and then the clutter and crashes from the items falling and hitting the ground and then it happened… I let go of the shelf and BOOM we both fell to the ground. As soon as my mom hit the ground she dove and rolled over so I wouldn’t land on top of her when I hit the ground.
There were so many people that were around us just trying not to laugh while me and my mom were in pain and trying to get up. While we were still on the floor trying to recover from what just happened when this REALLY tall guy that looked like he would be a really good and maybe famous basketball player walked by and asked if us ladies were ok. I was really embarrassed because that just happened out in public where a bunch of people saw and I just kept quiet and laid there for what felt like forever.
My mom answered and said “Yes, we are fine but can you help us get that pinata up there, the big bright blue and yellow one? He said sure thing and he was barely on the tipsy toes to grab it for us while trying not to laugh.
The lesson is to triple-think your decisions and think of the consequences that may occur. Teamwork does not always work if one is not comfortable with the decision.
