Life is a Distraction
Linda Pledger
It’s morning. As per habit of many
years, I’m up early, hitting the ground running. Sitting around the house in
pajamas is not my style.
As a teenager, I went to Charm
School. I was taught how to walk and sit like a lady, how to set a place
setting at the table, how to make a bed with hospital corners. But number
one, we were taught that a lady never sits around the house in pajamas.
You must remember this was the 1950’s.
Upon marrying no pajamas was a major
goal. After all I wanted to be the perfect wife. Unfortunately, my
husband never went to Charm School.
Unlike the ads with the perfect man
body tucked within snug fitting, silky jockey shorts, he wore white cotton from
JC Penney’s, three sizes too big. How he kept them up always puzzled me.
Fortunately, he kept them covered most of the time but the image always stayed
burned in my mind.
I often thought, as he advanced in
his field of academia, “If they only knew what was under that suit.”
After that wedding night surprise,
one of the first things I did was visit J C Penney’s and purchase a package of
large cotton “old lady panties”. Sadly, the joke was never even noticed
or he never commented.
I just chased two rabbits as is
typical. No matter what I start I am forever distracted. Could be one
rabbit or two, worst of all never to return to the subject or activity with
which I started.
Having intentions to go from the
bedroom to the kitchen gets waylaid by the laundry room. Where jeans, shirts
and socks are piled in the bedroom floor and need to be deposited in the
laundry basket. Once inside, the laundry room you start the washer
because the laundry basket of colored clothes is spilling over into the floor.
The washer humming away, behind the
door a dust bunny is daring you to get a dustpan and clear it away. Peter gone,
you are on your way again but remember that you have not emailed your
Mother-in-law today. Sitting down at the computer you dash off just a little
note which takes 30 minutes because once on the computer you find out your
sister has a major crisis that you should read about and answer, if only to say
I read about your situation.
Leaving the computer, you walk a few
steps and you are standing in the middle of the kitchen wondering, “now why did
I come into the kitchen?”
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